The Beginning

First day of "off season". I told my wife, Sarah, yesterday that now it is her time. She is training for Boston and the next couple of months I am dedicated to her training. Whatever time she needs I will work around her schedule. Sarah has been my biggest supporter through all the Ironman training, marathon training and just all my training stuff. This training session for her is very important. We both have been juggling the two of us training for the last 2 months, but now I am fully supporting her and her goals. I am still in the training mode (which never go away), but I have backed off to maintain fitness and help her achieve the goal she has established for herself for the next 3 months.

I woke this morning at 5 AM to "go to" the track (not hit the track) with two of my closest training buddies. Jeff and Bob. The 3rd one, Jay was, well??? We have trained together for a number of years and I have always enjoyed their company. Michele, the LSU Swimmer (very fast) was going to meet us as well to run her track workout but I received a text from her that she was going later. She is having some quad issues she probably made the right choice. I will find out from her tomorrow in the pool how she is doing. I also need to give her the data I collected from the Half Ironman event. I met, Jeff and Bob at LTF in the lobby and we ran over to the high school track. The air was cool and the morning pitch black. No moon to shine some light on our run to the track and around the track. Venus and Mars were dominating the skies this morning with Venus being the brightest object in the sky. It was calming to look up and see millions of stars in an area that is overpopulated with street lamps and other lighting. When we got to the track the only visual reference we had was the white lines on the track. We ran a scouting run around the track to move any debris, hoses, benches, trash cans, etc from our running path. Bob, who is training for a qualifying time for Boston was running: 2 X 1200M & 4 X 800M's. Jeff was running 5X (2 minutes fast then 2 minutes easy). Both Bob & Jeff are training on the Furman Institute Program. Jay, who just finished Augusta Half Ironman as well was MIA. Jay is also going to qualify for Boston, but took the day off, I guess. I decided to run the outside lane (Lane 8) at a moderate pace just to get the blood moving. We all started our different workout routines. The morning was so aphotic that 100 meters out you lost all visual contact with the runner in front of you. But the cool morning was so pleasurable that you got lost in your run and enjoyed the chill of the fall morning instead of the summer long Georgia humidity we have been experiencing. I saw that Bob was nailing all of his set times, with a little huffing and puffing. After the workout I looked up his times he was supposed to run. They were too fast. Jeff continued to looked strong on the fast then easy's. I thought about form and trying to increase my efficiency while circling the track. It was nice just to run without a set number of miles, a set time or a set pace. Just running was enjoyable. We all finished up our routines, the morning was still so black that when Bob finished his last 800M and stopped another runner almost ran him over. Neither Bob nor Jeff and I saw him cruise by us. I thought Bob was going to knockout another 800M just to show him who's boss. But he maintained his composure and we made our way back to the gym. When we get together the conversation is always lively even on the warm down runs. We got back to the gym and stretched then went our separate ways to start our day. It was a good start to the beginning.