Cancer Is HARD

As I write this post, I'm lying on my bed, with a heating pad under me, and my left ankle wrapped in ice.  Thanks go to my brilliant roomie for the suggestion of the heating pad, it's keeping me nice a toasty warm while my ankle gets the ice treatment.  I've really no idea what it's problem is beyond still acclimating to the running volume, since there has been no ankle trauma and the pain goes away relatively quickly.

So, about today's training... I had a commitment tonight with the Mt. Wilson Trail Race Committee, so I opted to do the AB training on my own this morning.  In hindsight, that was questionable wisdom given the workout at hand and the fact that I don't push myself when alone as hard as I do when I'm with the team.  Today, the best I was able to do was visualize Tom Augustin pacing me and Eric getting ready to lap me...Not perfect, but it definitely kept me moving!

BASTARDS!! Tonight's 6:30pm practice will begin at Station 108 (Search and Rescue) in Sierra Madre. This is located just west of Santa Anita along Grandview. Street shoes, headlamps, watches, and reflective vests if you like. RSVP in comments...  (To this post from Coach, I would add.... Bring Music!  Something I neglected to do and paid dearly for it when my head started to talk back to me during the run.)

This session called for parking at SAR and "Z1" run to St Rita's for warm-up. (For me, that was a jog and walk up the hill and took almost 15 minutes.)  From there the actually training was maximum effort back to SAR, up Liliano, over Arno, down Santa Anita and race back to St. Ritas... A total of 2.89 miles.

Followed by Rest Half - and REPEAT one more time... quality window was 5-10 seconds.  (Seriously?!)

My results:
30:52 First Round
15:30 Rest
33:01 Second Round
Walk back to SAR for cool down

Now, on a "hard" scale with cancer being a 10, this wouldn't even budge the needle, but on Kellie's personal fitness meter, this was definitely challenging.  Seen from one perspective, my times were 3-5 minutes too slow and I completely blew the quality window.  BUT from a different perspective; I only walked once each round and that was on Liliano from street number 1965 to street number 2055.  Maybe 100 meters.  For me, that's enormous progress.  So I'll focus on the positive perspective and just trust that my times will continue to drop as my training progresses.

On a side note... I've been waffling on expanding the blog to include a bit more personal data.  Seeing just the training gives a rather flat view of my life and the factors that may or may not have an impact on my training results.  So, from now on, when something interesting is going on, I'm going to start writing about it.