And Just When You Thought Hollywood Was Out of Original Ideas ...

... They completely redeem themselves!

Chiller TV brings you - Bunnyman

Wednesday, Feb. 1st at 8pm EST:



Seriously, it is about a killer dressed as a Bunny. I cannot make this shit up - watch the trailer. Thank me later.

Jeff

Running is Perplexing ...

Last Sunday I ran the Houston Marathon (will get a RR up one of these days) with my wife, Annie. My job was to be the pacer and push her to a PR so in order to not be tempted to run harder the timing chip was removed from my bib. Mission accomplished as Annie crossed the finish line in 4:07, which was a 7+ minute PR. Since the pace was around 9:20 for the 26.2mi my legs felt fine. I did not taper at all for the marathon and just treated it as my weekly long run.  I ended up running 63.22mi last week and was ready to take on the next week.

Monday (day after marathon) is my normal rest/recovery day so I took it as an off day. On Tuesday the schedule called for 9mi with 5x600s @ 5k pace. I crushed it - the pace for the 600s was 5:38 and I ended up logging a total of 9.6mi. Wednesday was an easy 5mi recovery run and Thursday was 14mi at a general aerobic pace (8:45/mi). Friday was supposed to be 10mi but we had our Tri Club Year End Banquet so due to time constraints was only able to log 6mi. The legs were feeling great going into the scheduled 13mi run for Saturday morning. It was a hot (75*) and humid morning (96%) but the 13mi clipped by quickly. All was good, until Sunday ...

This was a big day. The training plan had me doing 18mi with 12mi @ marathon pace. I needed to nail this run as it is the last marathon paced run at this distance. I picked out a fast and safe area to do the run and was set to go. You'd think on January 22nd that the temperature would not be 72* at 8am with 97% but this was the weather so I just brought some extra EFS Drink. I was prepared to hurt but had no idea it would be this bad.

Long story short: I did it - 7:02/mi pace for the 12 miles. 

It sucked, bad. I wanted to slow down and quit pretty much the entire run but kept pushing. I needed this run and when I finished, felt awful.

The car was parked next to a Starbucks. My bottles were empty so I went inside and got a big bottle of water and a coffee. I sat down at a table and could not move. It took me a few minutes to get the plastic cap off of the water bottle. It was ugly. 

Not sure how long I was sitting there? It could have been 5 minutes or 30 minutes, sort of a blur. Finally got some water in me and chased it with coffee and managed to waddle out to the car and head home. 

Walked in the door and told Annie that I had finally broke myself. I had hit my goal pace but the run had physically defeated me.

I spent the rest of Sunday laying around watching Football and feeling like absolute ass. I've had some difficult days training and racing but this was one of the worst. With some travel for work scheduled this coming week the training plan changed to have a 10mi recovery run today (Monday). By Sunday night I had decided that based on how I was feeling my body needed and extra day or maybe even two days.

Until I got home from work this afternoon and decided to go to Run Club and just do an easy 5mi. I figured that these 5 miles were going to be awful but something happened this evening ... best run in weeks?

I ended up doing 10mi and felt absolutely wonderful the entire time. Strong, powerful, fast. A mere 12-hours earlier I was thinking of never running again and my body and mind were fractured. 

Isn't it amazing how something as simple as running can crush your soul one day and put you on top of the world the next? Perplexing and Exhilarating, all at the same time.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff

Sh*t Cyclists Say ...

I am loving all these "Sh*t ______ Say" videos on YouTube.

This one is brilliant:



Jeff

Olympic Trials Pics ...

Saturday was the Olympic Marathon Trials and we were lucky enough to have front row seats for all the action. Annie snapped off over 180 pictures and instead of putting each one up on the blog Click Here to see them in a Picassa Album!

Enjoy

Jeff

Olympic Trials & Houston Marathon

This weekend is just packed full of runner activities!

The US Marathon Olympic Trials are being held in Houston on Saturday morning. This means all the fast kids are coming to play!

A group of us are headed down to get a glimpse of the future Olympians. The course set-up is quite different from the normal Houston Marathon course. It will be three loops and another smaller loop around the Convention Center:

This means the race will pass us by 4 times and we will still be able to cut over to the finish line to see the winners. Very spectator friendly set-up and we are all excited to see what real speed looks like.

Wish you could be here?

I got your back.

Even if you are not cool enough to live or be visiting the Great State of Texas I, along with an assist from The Twitter (@JeffIrvin), will make sure to give you tons of live coverage. I will be live tweeting all the action along with pictures and tons of snarky comments. So follow me on The Twitter and start looking for updates around 8:00AM CST.

After the trials we are going to head over to the Expo to pick-up our race packets for the Houston Marathon that is happening on Sunday. Yep, you read that right I typed "our" race packets because I am now running in the Marathon.

Originally I planned on being a spectator and the official cheering team for Annie but a spot opened up and she asked me if I would pace her. AND my training plan calls for a long run of 22mi that day so I figured why not? This is going to be just a training run but with like 25K other runners. Going to try and pace Annie to a 4:10ish time!

Then to wrap up the fun filled Saturday, Annie and I have been invited to attend the Brooks Running party to celebrate the Brooks athletes that have made the Olympic Squad! This should be a really good time and we are planning on taking a bunch of pictures. However, it will have to be an early night as we have to be in our corral by 6:40am the next morning!

Brooks Running

Then Sunday morning it is race time and hopefully a new PR for my lovely wife Annie!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff