Pigs

[ed. note as you read this post, laugh whenever you see a reference to adding two seconds to each mile. It turned out to be more like 10. I'll adjust the table and add more notes later, for posterity.]

More on the title in a minute. Yesterday was an easy four miler, which put me at 49 miles for the first full week back from the pool, with one day to go. I think I said I was going for 55, so I was in good position going into this morning's run.

Lately, I pretty much know that if my first mile comes in under 7:00, I'm feeling recovered. Which means it's going to be a faster run. Today was no exception. I also had a new toy, a Polar 200SD. I'm not going to be keeping it, but I decided to give it a try since my Garmin 301 is on the fritz. The Polar uses the footpod instead of GPS, so once it is calibrated, it should be more reliable and potentially even more accurate. Once it is calibrated. Did I mention the thing is useless until it is calibrated? [ed. note: this thing is useless unless it is calibrated.]

Mile one was 6:53, but the watch was off by about .15 of a mile [ed. note: this mile is accurate.]. That's a lot. I had tried to calibrate it to my treadmill, which obviously didn't work. I reverted to the default calibration and set off on the rest of my run. Mile two was within 10 meters of what my GPS normally hits [ed. note: that means my GPS is 20 meters off. This just keeps getting better...], so I figured all of my splits going forward were probably good with an added two seconds [ed. note: ha!]. Here are the rest of the splits with corresponding heart rate information:

**Splits have now been adjusted +10 seconds**

	Time	Avg HR	Max HR
Mile 1	6:53.3	133	142
Mile 2	5:57.7	147	155
Mile 3	5:42.2	155	158
Mile 4	5:35.9	158	160
Mile 5	5:34.1	159	162
Mile 6	5:32.0	161	163
Mile 7	5:33.8	162	164
Mile 8	5:18.2	168	175

Minus the first mile, that's 39:06 for seven miles 6.70 miles including the extra seconds. I'm going to ride out the course on my bike this afternoon because it will drive me nuts otherwise. [ed. note: I should have stayed home. Now it's really driving me nuts.] This is one of the faster workouts of this distance I have ever done, and it was very comfortable, even through the end of the last mile. I have to check this course...

More important though is that it felt great and very controlled. Even if the miles were five seconds off ten seconds off, it shows I have gained fitness coming out of a nine day cross training layoff, and I have some semblance of durability in my lower legs again. I also have gained confidence that I can do relatively hard aerobic workouts with one day of recovery, like Fatboy recently recommended. Since I am training up for a marathon and not a 10k, I'm really not concerned about hard workouts and repetitions. I'll get in some mile or 2000 meter repeats later on in the buildup and will continue with striders 2-3 times a week, but the bread and butter of my first marathon will be long, strongly aerobic efforts as often as possible, and moderate distance AT/tempo pace runs once a week. And assloads of calf raises.

Now, about those fucking pigs. I respect police officers, just like I respect firefighters and military people. They are all providing a service to the rest of us, making it possible for people like me to pursue pointless leisure activities like training for marathons, instead of fighting thugs in the street for scraps of food like we all would be doing if it were not for the social order that these people help to provide. On the whole, these are great people doing great things.

I'm running down the street, on the street, at 5:2x 5:3x pace, just after 6am. In a small town on Fourth of July weekend, there is no one driving. There is no one driving at 6am seven days a week on these roads. Except for two bored cops. I spotted them from about 100m away, just hanging out at a green light. Odd. As I run by, I flash them a quick wave, and continue on. No wave back. Odd. Another 30m down the road past them, I hear an eardrum blasting voice over a loudspeaker:

[unintelligible] RUN ON THE SIDEWALK.

"Fucking motherfuckers" was how I expressed my shock. Continuing to run on the road was how I expressed by lack of respect for these two idiots. These are the people I'm supposed to depend on to maintain social order? They can't even restrain themselves from harrassing someone who is obviously causing no harm to anyone? I would expect cops to be way beyond doing that kind of 'run, Forrest, run' crap. I guess not. I wanted to turn around and just point blank ask them what I was doing wrong, and if it was illegal to run on the road. I also wanted to ask them to write me a ticket, so I could take a day off from work to go to court and make a point of how these pricks are spending their time. I didn't because I had a mile to go and I wasn't going to waste my breath on them. They still screwed me though, because a 5:10 5:18 mile has nothing to do with tempo pace. Bastards.

There must be something about the cops around here. Me and a friend of mine were literally and purposely run off of the road into a ditch by a sheriff's car about twelve years ago. It's one incident that sticks out in my mind causing me to believe that no one has respect for a runner except for other runners. Anyway...

Hope you all are having a good weekend. Celebrate your hard-earned freedom, watch some Fox News, wave your flag, and go 'splode some stuff.