Sunday, March 1, 2009

Running update - 7 weeks to Boston

A partial view of downtown, taken from the Police Memorial on Memorial Drive. This was on our way back from the baseball game today.


The Boston Marathon is just 7 weeks away. Due to the knee injury - and the Tanzania trip - my training is not where I would like it to have been. However this last week things have finally started to go well. I had a good 5-mile Park to Park race last Saturday (Feb 21), running the first 3 miles at about 7:15 pace before slowing down over the last two. The next day's half marathon race was a disaster. I bailed out at 9 miles; absolutely nothing left and feeling quite ill. However by Monday night I was much better and jogged 6 miles with Daisy in tow. Tuesday night's mile repeats at Memorial High School track was ok; three miles at around 7:25, well below my usual pace but not bad. On Wednesday I managed about 9 miles at Memorial Park, and Thursday some hard tempo runs at Terry Hershey Park, with a few of the regular Strider runners. By Friday a scheduled rest day felt good! Saturday's 16-mile long run was at New Ulm, under exceedingly windy conditions, I practically had to fight my way through the teeth of a gale, for the first few miles. The return stretch was much easier, but my average pace was snail-like, barely under 10:00 per mile... All in all, I managed to rack up 49 miles total, the highest total in many weeks.

This morning (Sunday March 1) I did 6 miles along Buffalo Bayou and it felt great, no soreness, the knee is fine and there was definitely some life in the legs. Hopefully the rest of the week will go equally well. Kathleen and I saw Rice beat Baylor 8-3 at the College Classic Series at Minute Maid, it was fun to see some baseball again! Rice also beat the highly touted A & M team on Saturday night, 2-0.

The new Reserve Bank on Memorial Drive

Another view of downtown Houston from Memorial Drive

3 comments:

Amy said...

Nice pictures of Houston - hang in there with your training!

Unknown said...

Bert,
Ja,daar mors die Aussies toe met ons,net toe die Proteas dink hulle is nou die beste!
Nee wat Bert,daai drawwery klink na baie pyn en lyding,kry vir jou n lekker mountainbike,dis baie lekkerder as hardloop!
Mooi loop.

Minken said...

That is my exact running route - used to live right off the Bayou and Studemont (right behind that huge condo hi-rise that they are building). My favorite section is when you cross over sabine bridge (next to downtown) but keep running into downtown and loop back by the Aquarium. (adds another 1.5 miles or so I think to the standard Sabine - Shepard loop).