patriotic-AL

Al Discusses the Olympic Marathon Trials and a Sunday Race

2 Sundays from now is the NYC marathon. As part of the marathon weekend, the Olympic Team Trials for the Men's Marathon will be run on Saturday through NYC. Al will be in attendance. This promises to be an awesome event with many of the world's best marathoners in attendance.

Al will be out there yelling. "Go USA!"


This week has been a good week for me with running. I worried I might not recover well from last Sunday's race. But I feel good. I've put in about 30 miles this week. Tomorrow, I'm running a 5 mile race with the LIRRC again. I'll show up early and take a 5 mile run for warm up. Then I'll race the 5. I'll see how I feel, but I plan to run 7s. Maybe I'll push a little faster. Play it by ear.



AL UPDATE:

I ran a 34:55 for the 5 miler. So I paced out at 6:59, almost precisely what I was looking for. All my miles were about 7s, no great variation. I finished about 12th or so (yeah, yeah...not a large field and no real elite runners. And fuck you.) :)

Weekend Plans

Crossers from around the globe are once again converging at the center of the universe (the East Coast) for a weekend of racing at Granogue and Wissahickon.

Not Moveitfred.

He promised the Mrs. he would devote the entire weekend to prepping the house for the annual La Casa de Fred holiday Halloween bash next Friday (replete with spooky music, haunted environments of blood and gore, and soup) for the upwards of 500 guests or howeverthehell many people the Mrs. invited THIS YEAR.

(the white space is for you to draw your own picture)

Get this. The Mrs. flipped the freak out when Moveitfred expressed a desire to just go to some little neighborhood race in Jersey on Sunday morning. JUST Sunday morning. NOT the entire weekend in DE and PA. Holy craps.

OK, aight. So Moveitfred will stay home and mow and clean and assemble and bake (yes, Moveitfred bakes one wicked-ass apple pie, dogs). Cross On brothers and sisters.

Moveitfred understands Al is buying a new house this weekend. Here is a picture. Needs some updating, but overall a good snag in Moveitfred's mind.

Moveitfred understands Heywood is on yet another vacation. How's things in Frisco, Wood? Get to that restaurant in The Castro you like so much?

Tacky to Nasty

Heywood arrived home after a long 48 hours at work, eager to hit the trails for a few hours. The weather forecast called for a possibility of rain but if one were to look out the window you could not tell. Clear skies, crisp cool air, and the smell fall. What a glorious day it appeared to be! So Wood lubed the chain, filled the Camelbak, pumped the tires up to 42 lbs and started riding to the trailhead.

The terrain conditions started out superb. Kinda tacky from the rain Auburn received a few days prior. Heywood was able to take most turns at a pace much faster than normal. The tough technical descent, no problem. The climb along the Confluence Trail which usually requires a dab or two, aced it. So far this ride was flawless in the eyes of Woods. While approaching the top of the climb, a few small drops started to fall from the heavens but he was able to make it to the top and hit the first few double jumps before the cats and dogs came out to play.

Someone with a Doppler radar decided it would be funny to put a red colored storm cell right over the trail Heywood Jablome was riding. The trail started getting real sloppy and mud was flying all over the place. When looking down, Wood realized he had the wrong tires on. The WTB 2.55 LT is great in the hardpack but gum up pretty darn fast when things get swampy. Not the tire of choice in wet conditions. With this tire in the front, traction was very hard to come by. While attempting to ride up an off camber rock with a drop off the side when whamo! The front wheel slid off the rock and down the little drop. Wood broke his fall with his ass/hip area and came sliding to a stop. When he looked down he noticed to things:
His new Smarty SL Crank Brothers pedal had snapped.
Wood’s shin appeared to have a grapefruit mounted on it.

This disappointed Wood to no end. Shouldn’t pedals be able to take more than one big crash before breaking into a thousand pieces? Second, why was there a large fruit on his leg?

Wood managed to limp his way to the Chef’s house where Mrs. Chef gave him some counseling that will probably do no good. The Chef eased Wood’s pain with milk and cookies and things are all good.

A few of Moveitfred's favorite things

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Red, white, and blue USPS packages from E-Richie tied up with tape and filled with all kinds of cool shit

These are a few of Moveitfred's favorite things

Glocie Convention

Let's get this one out of the way first:

Moveitfred is an idiot.

There. Not that most of you didn't know this already, but just in case you're new to this game. And fahk, couldn't at least one of you cheapskates have thrown down a couple of bucks for some of that Gloucester venue chowder so Moveitfred could drown his sorrow?

OK, so post-Gloucester Moveitfred needs to cover a couple of things. First, Moveitfred feels like he knows what a Trekie convention is like now. Moveitfred couldn't turn two steps in the crowd without intruding on some other blogger's personal space. Some were balanced on 4-inch clogs to give them a more, ahem, imposing vertical presence [Litka]. Some were amped up so high on "the bean" that Moveitfred felt his hair stand on end when he got too close [Meg]. Some were clearly so deep into "the program" that they were able to score a podium finish in those huge fields of like, what, 500 racers [CTodd]. Still others were leading great packs of baby blue crossers like this little place on earth was the Promised Land [Zank]. And finally, some were decked out in such horrendous attire that Moveitfred can only say they looked like giant orange Yetis that wrought fear in Moveitfred's unstable constitution [G].

Moveitfred knows that other bloggers of renown were mixed in among the masses. Are there any crossers who do not blog? Sheesh.

Live long and prosper, Bloggers.

Moveitfred has one other issue to discuss. Where Moveitfred is from (i.e. Civilization) when a sign on the road indicates that there is a McDogalds or SubwaySubwaySubway off at the next exit, one need only pull easily off the highway for a short distance, inhale processed food of choice, and easily re-enter the highway in order to speed on one's way.

Moveitfred had the same experience on two different occasions up in the back woods of northern Mass. He spied a tempting list of confections on a highway sign only to pull off onto a vast, winding, vapid wasteland through dark, foreboding forests and then be dumped out at the end of it all into some grey, clapboard neighborhood with no indication whatsoever which way to go to get the fat fix. Moveitfred was looking for Faith with the Pink Ribbons to ask for directions.

On one off-ramp Moveitfred was able to find a McDogalds after driving about 5 miles west, only to then discover upon backtracking that there was no ramp back onto the 95 South. Talk about a fahking one-way ticket to hell--flame-lit rocky alter or not.

Now, if you've been able to hang on so far with this horrific blending of Star Trek and Hawthorne let Moveitfred simply end with a few images from an epic day. Looking forward to an early arrival and two full days next year.

Spectacular day on the water

A #1: I heard Heywood might be here.

A #2: Is that him coming around the corner?

G--Fahking track star in the sand


CTodd making everyone hurt up the hill

Kreb in the house

Robin over the boards

Zank feeling the pain of being half-way through

Bessette stretching out her lead through the sand

Alie Kenzer picking a line down the hill

Meg getting it going tight and fast


Tim Johnson chasing after rolling a tire


Powers leading the front group through the sand

renewab-AL

Wherein AL discusses his return to racing


Today was a good day for running. The morning was crisp and cool and sunny...the perfect fall day. All month I've been thinking "when can I race again?" I've been rehabbing this calf injury and hoping to see some real progress. Last week was the first week that I felt whole, and I pushed it a bit: I logged 35 miles and did some quick days. I felt I was ready for something more. I contemplated running the Staten Island 1/2 marathon, but that seemed too much considering how long my injury down time was. Instead, I chose the LIRRC 10 miler.

The course was, basically, three loops around the mostly flat Eisenhower Park. We started at 9 am with a nice light breeze and 55 degrees. I felt good from the start; it was one of those races where I had to hold myself back, not gallop ahead. I told myself I'd just run nice easy 8s. But it was just too great to be in a race again, and I felt too good. I didn't want re-injury, but 8s were too slow. So I said to myself, ok run 7:40s . That plan worked, mostly, but I kept holding myself back as I was a bit worried. But all was good...
1) 7:30
2) 7:30
3) 7:40
4) 7:46
5) 7:42
6) 7:45
7) 7:40
8) 7:40
9) 7:35
10) 7:07

Total: 1:16.02

A nice little addition to coming back and feeling strong: I placed 2nd in my age and 6th overall. (Obviously, the field did not include any elite runners and no records were set. Still nice to get the little ribbon.)

Nice to be back and I feel good.

Fred-o is up at the G-spot or G-ster (whatever the fuck it is). KICK ASS FRED!!! Say hi to Solo and all for me.