The Halsted Run

In a comment from a few days ago, Eric mentioned that I should make sure that I'm training to race, and not just training to train. That's never really been a problem for me in the past. For the most part, most of my training has been a frantic effort to make sure I was in decent enough shape for a good marathon. To be sitting here in late July, pretty much in the best shape of my life and probably very capable of setting a PR at any distance that I ran is a little different for me. Laast year at this point in the summer, I still hadn't done a run longer than 13 miles. So adding mileage was an attempt by me to make things more interesting. There are two ways to make things interesting…more miles or more fast miles. After thinking about it some more, I think the answer is to try and do some more quality in there and keep right around 100 miles a week. Not sure what exactly it's going to look like, but hopefully next week will offer some clarity.

Today I did the infamous Halsted Run to work. As described before it's 23 miles and I hate every step of it. I mean really. I hate this run. There is absolutely nothing appealing about it. It's a boring route, I have never seen another runner out there in the 4+ years I've been doing it, and it isn't a very safe nighborhood to be in. But I need to do it. It is this run that makes me feel like I can do anything. I do most of my training to work this system or that system, to try and trigger some physiological dohickey, or well, most of it goes way over my head. However, the one thing I do know is that Halsted Run makes me mentally tougher, and that comes in handy at mile 24 of a marathon.

I did things a little differently today on this run. For the first half of the run, I was not into it. I just wanted to stop and go home. I stopped about half-way through the run for some water, and after that things started to feel better. I think mentally being past the halfway mark on a point to point route kind of helps. Once your past the point of no return, all you can do is press on to the finish line. All in all, it was a pretty good run. With dewpoints in the upper 60's at the start, it was humid again, but the temps were lower, so it could have been worse. I was still soaked when I was done again. The humidity gets me everytime.

I just wanted to take the last paragraph to acknowlege my friend Nattu, who is going to Badwater this weekend to take on the Badwater Ultramarathon which starts Monday morning. Just getting accepted to run this crazy adventure is not an easy thing to do, and don't even get me started on the actual race. I think it's generally accepted to be the crowning achievement of an ultra-marathoners career. And to think, that Nattu is a relative newbie to this whole ultramarathoning thing, just makes it all the more impressive. He's being crewed by a few friends I've met through running and a few people I don't know. I hope everyone, crew included, gets a chance to fully appreciate the magnitude of what they're about to accomplish. It truly is awesome. And all for a belt buckle.