Of Devil Dogs, San Diego 100 and things that go Boom

I love dogs however there are two in this building that need to be taken out. Perhaps shipped to a country side somewhere where they can bark all they want and bother no one. These devil dogs are two small white poodles who live on my floor and every night around this time they go for a walk. These dogs go off on people, barking like crazy and stretching their leashes. I put the blame squarely on the owners, no discipline whatsoever. I can hear them right now and they are half a block away.

Anyway I felt like I just went through a long race. Work has been erratic lately because of the economy but a couple of projects came in. One of them got me working 50 hours through the Memorial day weekend. From Friday to Monday and most of it at "race pace". By Monday morning I felt the exhaustion I usually feel at mile 80 of a 100-miler. It was the mental aspect of the job I think, all that creative thinking under stress. Haha it was good mental training for San Diego, what I kept telling myself anyway. I did get my taper workouts in though, thank God I'm on taper. Our track coach, Coach Dorette, caught up to me Saturday morning 9 miles into an 18-miler. She's like "nice pace" and I told her "It's cause I have a conference call at 11am and I'm 10 minutes behind schedule". I made it, I negative split that baby. After that was done another project came in. Smaller, not as intense but the deadline is a.s.a.p. How it goes sometimes and I'm not complaining one bit.

With only a little over a week to go I am now starting to get excited for San Diego. The RD's just emailed us final directions this week. I've been reading up on the details of the race and will start reading race reports this weekend. I've also been talking with some of my fellow entrants; Ted Nunes, Suzanna Bon, Ben Gaetos and Andy Kumeda. Andy has been a big help, he has done this race a number of times and has answered my questions about the course. Thanks Andy.

The taper is going well. I'm worried that I started it too early but I was pretty beat after Miwok. The following weekend after that race I went out for my last long run and it took me over 5 hours to cover 18-20 miles. Took a lot of mental power to keep moving on that one. I was fine again the next day but I had no distance in me. I've been tapering since that weekend. Short workouts, keeping the intensity up when I could. I don't know about other runners but when I enter the taper my body becomes sluggish, slow and the food cravings go up. I was taught it's a normal part of the process and having done it many times I'm used to it now. Eventually my body "pops back up" and I think it did that yesterday at track practice. We were off-site, at a beach, running on the sand and doing repeats on a steep hill made of sand and small logs for steps. We call it the "Sandladder" and it's pretty tough. Steep and long enough to make your quads and glutes burn. I was slow and sluggish on the beach run. I got passed by most of the group but when we hit those Sandladder repeats the legs went BOOM. They started turning over at a higher rate and loosened up considerably. Today I went for a 6-mile run after work and I came in at a time I haven't seen in a couple weeks. I wasn't working too hard in fact I had to keep reminding myself to pull back a bit on the run. Well I'm a week early but then I started the taper early too. Feels good though, now just to maintain till next Saturday. A few short but high intensity runs should do it.

Hope you all have another great weekend.

Coach Dorette and Tracey at the start of our Baker Beach / Sandladder workout.