Wednesday, November 15, 2006

7, the easy way

Great morning, great night, great week! Last night brought the The Houston Striders monthly meeting. Pizza, beverages, fun, and frivolity were had by all the record 120+ attendees. The highlight of the evening for me had to be seeing all the Striders. What a great bunch of people. Our incredibly resourceful president booked extreme athlete and ultrarunner, Marshall Ulrich. Marshall spent a little over an hour talking about his adventures, climbing the tallest peaks on each continent, running Badwater WITHOUT SUPPORT, his Quad Badwater, where he ran 4 legs of the brutal 135 mile ultramarathon fron Death Valley to Mt. Whitney Portals trough 130+ degree heat. What an incredible athlete. I never knew how much was involved in climbing Mt. Everest. Climbers spend weeks and weeks climbing up a few thousand feet, then climbing back down to recover, then up a little higher, then back down. Then they finally get to to point where they can almost make it and they go all the way back down for a few days before starting all over. The purpose of all these weeks of "ups and downs" is simply to acclimate your body to prepare it to make it to the summit. Unbelieveable!! Oh, one more thing. Marsahll is such an extreme athlete and ultra runner that instead of constantly struggling with feet problems, ingrown toenails, busted toenails, he just had all his toenails surgically removed. Anyway, great meeting, Steve!!! Thanks for a great time.

This morning Hal prescribed a mid-week, mid-long run of 7 miles. I must say that this week, I've been feeling really good. The weight is staying below 300 and I think I made it over the 300-305 plateau that I was on for about 4 weeks. My daily weight has been below 300 since 3 Nov. I did peek over 300 for one day on the 9th but it must have just been from digestive contents and hydration because I was back down under the next day.

Anyway, back to the run. I ran pretty good for 3 miles and my pace was right around 14 minutes per mile. After 3 miles, I didn't really stop or rest or get a drink but my average pace just kept getting better and better with the same, easy, converstional effort. I think the temperature dropped a few degrees since arriving at the park. Anyway, my next mile was down around 13:30 and mile 5 came in about 13:00. Well, since I was feeling good with that nice, easy effort, I just tried to maintain it, wondering when the pace was going to catch up with me. It never did. I ran into the Ulrich pod with Steeeve, Bill, James, and extreme athlete, Marshall Ulrich. Coach stopped me (we were going opposite directions) and introduced me to Marshall. We talked for a few minutes and then I ran about a half mile with the pod. Well, all but Bill were out of eyesight and over the horizon in about 1 minute. Hero Bill slowed downa to run with me and we got to chat a bit and that's always a good thing. We ran back to the swimming pool parking lot, chatted a bit more, got some photos (here's one of Marshall and me),

and I was on my way to finish up. After standing around for a few minutes, I'd think I would start to get stiff and start to cool off but when I took off, I was really feeling my oats. I ended up posting sub-13 miles for 6 and 7. Here are the stats:

Total distance - 7.0 miles
Venue - Memorial Park loop
Total time - 1:33:56
Mile 1 - 14:00
Mile 2 - 13:56
Mile 3 - 13:55
Mile 4 - 13:29
Mile 5 - 13:03
Mile 6 - 12:40
Mile 7 - 12:51
Average pace - 13:25

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to seeya out there this morning! Your looking good and coming along nicely. In my eyes the issue has been settled, your going to run a marathon in January!

Anonymous said...

I cannot help but notice those two sub 13:00 miles at the end. Good work!

Junie B said...

damn vic, great going!
oh and by the way, whats the weather to be like this weekend? ;O)

Jill said...

Negative splits on virtually every mile! That is too cool!! Way to go.

SRR said...

hmmmm...similar pic on someone else's blog. :-) Great job!