It's now mid-September
The rain is comin' down
Un'verse is abhorin'
Intervals, almost drowned
Well, the wind it rages
I'm just glad it's done
Pavement under, was no thunder
Grouling in rain

First of all, knee update.  I've been doing what I can to train enough and still recover, and I think I threaded the needle, knock on wood.  My theory is that I had a bruised tendon, and it's feeling much better.

Today I ran some intervals.  It wasn't a good day.  Given how my body felt, it wouldn't have been a good day if it was sunny and nice.  As it was, the wind, rain, and standing water on the road made a bad workout miserable.  It was like the whole Universe didn't want me to run fast today.  Oh well.  At least it wasn't a race, and these days happen.  The good news is as bad as today felt, the times weren't that bad.  They were bad, but not as bad as I might have expected.

Sorry about not getting a post on Monday (I'm looking for Monday, Friday posts, just not finding them as much as I want), but I was a little on the tired end of things.  As I said, I was doing all the training I could manage without hurting my knee more, and then I had to help pack out and skin a bear on top of that.  And the Broncos playing Monday Night Football until some terrible hour of the night didn't help.

Oh, and the last post's poem was to the meter and rhyme of 99 Red Balloons, originally by Nena, but I'm partial to the Goldfinger version.

Lot's of training, but now I cannot
And if I was a horse, well then I would be shot
Legs feel good I want to run on
But injury is foregone
Lost training's more than I can bear
Of snowplows I advise beware
Now my training's gone awry
Whine and whine, I just want to cry

Write to rhyme words with tunes
And now I'm left wond'ring why
And that snowplow, man it hurt
And now my knee hurts, nothing else
When I run now, pain is rife
Blunt force inj'ry underlies
Overuse does not apply
I whine and whine, I just want to cry

The other day I was doing a little snowplow maintenance.  I tried to walk over to check the manual and hit my knee on the plow.  It hurt.  It still hurts, four days later.  Hopefully it stops hurting soon, because it's starting to affect my training.  If a snowplow injury keeps me from reaching my goals, I will never forgive myself, or the snowplow.  Well, I'd probably forgive myself eventually, but the snowplow on the other hand...sometimes I hold onto grudges.  But the good thing is that it hurts much less today than it did yesterday.

Not much else worth writing or reading about.  The last post's title was based on Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams.  Hopefully that wasn't a self-fulfilling prophecy, given my snowplow related injury since then.

It was a lonely road
With 890s on dirt and I have flown
And I presuppose
You're not reading this 'cause I'm unknown

I did those mile repeats
And the sweat ran down my face in streams
Did those miles in heaps
And if I do them fast I won't be unknown

But I'm unknown
Yes, I'm unknown
I should have known
I run un...

My birthday's no reason to take it easy
By ten I thought that my heart would stop beating
My cooldown was slow 'cause I had no esprit
And I still am unknown


My birthday was two days ago.  To "celebrate" I did the hardest interval workout I've ever done.  I finished feeling like I'd just done a long, hard race.  I was almost too tired to do my long run yesterday.  Almost.

I'll spare you all the details of the workout.  Mainly so that if somebody other than my grandmother is actually reading this, they won't steal my workouts.  Sufficed to say, I thought my legs were on the verge of giving out before I hit the halfway point.  To clarify a bit from above, I wore New Balance 890s.  Lightweight with enough support for what seemed like a million miles.

I guess I'll also finish my Switzerland update, since I've been back for almost a month now.  The race organizers hired a gourmet chef to cook breakfast and dinner every day for the invited racers.  We had free lunch in a different gourmet restaurant every day.  Except for the day that we gathered at somebody's house for wine and raclette, a special cheese from the Alps.  It comes in a giant wheel and they heat it up and scrape a bunch of melted cheese on top of potatoes.  It was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten.  Quote of the day from another runner:  "These kids are so smart.  They're like five and they know French.  I don't even know French!"

The race was pretty good too.  I wasn't quite ready for the steepness of the Alps.  Or, more accurately, I wasn't quite ready for the race course ignoring switchbacks going strait up, and far more terrifyingly, down.  I guess I know what to be ready for next time, because I fully intend to race Sierre-Zinal again.  Running with my own drinks was a good plan, because PowerBar Ironman Perform is much better than taking your chances with feed stations and wondering if you'll get sparkling water, tea, wine...  Little things like that helped me be the 8th place and the top American.

Next up is the Chicago Marathon.  We'll see how that goes.