germs all around...

Monday evening 3.24.08:

Ok so right after work I walked across the street from our office to our health club to get in my scheduled FIRST tempo run in for the day on the treadmill. For some reason the club was packed at 5pm, must have been all those folks feeling really guilty for enjoying all the Easter food & candies plus the place was like a sauna in the fieldhouse where all the equipment is located (ya know b doesn’t like heat & humidity while training and or racing).

The Furman Institute Marathon training program FIRST doesn’t really have much of a taper compared to more traditional training programs as John P verified a few days ago in my blog. So today’s run was to be 6 miles total with the first 2 miles at warm-up pace then right into a 3 mile tempo at an approximate ~7:14 pacing and then a one mile cool-down. Below is my tempo time with average & max HR values:

3 mile – 21:22 – 7:07 pace – AHR 147bpm – MHR 153bpm

My total run time for the 6 was 48:25 with an average HR of 134bpm. I ran the first 3 miles at a one degree incline then the next two miles the incline I varied it other from zero to .5 to 1 degree often and the last cool-down mile I ran at a one degree incline. The run went very well but the only thing that affected me was the temperature in the health club…below I describe the reason I couldn’t use the oscillating fan in front of the treadmills…

When I first got in the club my favorite treadmill was taken so I hopped on the one right next to it thinking that the person on the one I like would not be running far as most people do not at our health club. But that was not to be the case as I started my run on the ‘mill and then I noticed the young women on the fav treadmill doing very un-usual things that I have never seen a treadmill runner do before…she was quite obviously suffering from a cold but about every two minutes or so she would either blow her nose into her running singlet and/or into one of the two smaller health club towels she had sitting on the control panel of the machine…grossness indeed but luckily she was not sneezing the germs my way. My marathon taper paranoia set in immediately with my mind thinking the worst thoughts for my own health…hence no fan usage because I didn’t need that stuff forced over my way! After my run I cleaned my treadmill properly as I always do and I speedlined to the men’s locker room to immediately went into the steam room for 12 minutes to try and disinfect my body as quickly as possible and then a hot shower afterwards to make sure…at home I took some extra vit-c along with some extra recovery drink solution…taper paranoia kicked in big time for me last night!

b