So, time to get serious. I’ve put together a new plan based on the Greg McMillian training program. Before, most of my workouts were just easy runs, with intervals thrown in once a week. Now, every workout during the week has a goal. And each week focuses on different aspects of my training. I chosen the Gobbler Grind Marathon as my peak race, then a month later I’ve got a Turkey Trot 5K. My goals? PR the marathon and follow that performance up with a 5K PR.

This week is my first week in the new plan. I’m doing strides and a tempo runs, types of workouts I’ve been ignoring for a long time. I’m using the McMillian calculator goal paces based on my 30:20 four miler – which is a pretty good measure of my current state of fitness. It also won’t hurt if I can shed some of these extra eight pounds I’ve piled on since Comrades. Time to start eating better and get rid of this extra weight. That represents sixteen seconds per mile all by itself!

So, my first workout was six miles at 9:20 pace. I also threw in four strides – .05 miles at better than 6:00/mile pace. Nicely, the weather has broken here a bit and I actually enjoyed letting it fly. Today, three miles of tempo!

Jason and I showed up at the Ghisallo Running running store in UCity Saturday morning. Whenever a local race is run by a running store or a track club it draws out all the fast people. This was no exception. I knew was not going to get an age group award when the Michelob Ultra Running Team showed up. At least there was going to be free beer at the end of the race!

238 people joined us at the start line for this run thru University City. The temp was only 76 at start, but humidity was about the same. We got serious pea soup air and I knew from the start this was going to be difficult. Of course, I started too fast – burning the first half mile in a couple seconds over three minutes. Which was the last time in the race that I felt good. Right at the start of the first mile, they put in a hill. Which was not cool. But the serious downfall was the hill installed near the end of mile two. Those two hills were steep and ugly. Mile two was done in a hair under eight minutes. Mile three included the third obstacle in my path, another up and down. Sucking all the humidity my lungs could process, I finished that mile in 7:45. Now the home stretch. Of course I was fried at this point and about five girls chicked me in the last mile. But I groaned into the finish in a final time of 30:20. After a water/Gatorade stop, I headed back over to the finish to watch Jason come in. But I missed his finish because he came in at 33:20 while I was drinking.

Not too bad! 7:35 per mile average pace. I’m sure I’ve got a much better four miler in me, but given my training speeds, the weather conditions, and the challenging course, I have to consider myself satisfied. I finished behind 74 runners and 17th in my age group. In order to finish third in my age group, I needed to run six minutes faster! Damn you Michelob Ultra! Although you were tasty at the end of the race, mainly because you were very cold and served by an extremely hot young lady.

We also got a free ice cream treat from a disreputable looking ice cream truck. Ghisallo also gave out tons of attendance prizes and had everything in the store (except for Vibram Five Fingers) 20% off for the runners. Which was a nice touch except I didn’t win an attendance prize or need any running stuff. But it was a fun event and I’ll come back next year to better that four mile PR.

While I was doing this little race, Kathy was knocking out 16 miles with her Fleet Feet marathon training group. In the conditions, her run was seriously impressive. This morning I did eight miles in similar conditions and suffered every step of the way. Her marathon training is going very well – I expect her to score a new marathon PR during Lewis and Clark this fall.

South Africa has a reputation as a violent country. If any of that violence was going to be experienced by us, this village seemed like it would have been the place. We stood out like a quartz deposit in a coal vein. There was a sea of people shopping in the large open air market, but no one gave us a second look. In fact, I think we drew less attention here then a stranger would when walking the streets of the small town where I grew up.

Anyway, by the time we made it to St. Lucia, we checked in to the Mango Guest House, a comfortable B&B where we four were the only guests. It turns out this is the down season for St. Lucia, particularly with limited European visitors due to the economy. One of the first things Leonard, our guest house host, told us was to not dip a toe in any water unless it was the ocean. Crocs! He also told us at night we should always turn right in the evening when leaving the guest house and walking downtown. Which seems strange since either direction would get us around the block. But it is valuable advice – it turns out hippos use the street on the left as part of their walking path when they move from the estuary to the land to graze at night. You definitely do not want to run into a 4000 pound mammal in the dark who is quick to anger!

The first thing we did was find a boat tour of the estuary. Following Gary’s advice, we booked tickets on a shallow draft boat. We hopped on the boat with a dozen other tourists and headed out. The estuary is very shallow, around four feet deep, but very wide. Hippos and crocodiles are very prominent. Our guide would get us pretty close to the beasties, but if a hippo displayed any aggressive behavior, he would back the boat away immediately. We also spied fish eagles, South Africa’s national bird, and other bird species. The guide was very informative and entertaining and the tour was excellent. Some of the best shots are below:

While on the boat tour, Jason wielded a hippo tooth for scale. Note this is their little tooth, not one of the big ones. There is a reason that hippos kill more people in Africa than any other mammal. They have plenty of two characteristics which don’t mesh well, skittishness and aggressiveness. If you get between them and water, they’ll trample you while getting back to the water where they feel safer. They are also fiercely protective of their babies and will not hesitate to do serious damage if they feel you are threatening their kiddies. Basically, they are two ton crushing machines.

The next day we drove on the game reserve up the coast, stopping in a couple different places on the ocean. We also stopped at a couple viewing locations and got this shot of a (flock, teeth, squad?) of crocodiles sunning themselves next to the water. Note the antelope on the left – apparently unconcerned for his own safety but comfortable knowing he could get away before being chowed on by a lizard. This picture doesn’t show it, but there were even more crocs along the shore all along here. They run to 15 feet in length and look pretty scary.

After we got back to St. Lucia that afternoon, we went down to a promenade near the estuary. While strolling along the boardwalk, a pod of hippos decided to make their daily move from water to grass. We were lucky enough to see several of them moving from far enough away to be safe, but close enough to get a good look at them. Them strolling along was pretty impressive. Here’s a shot of a mother and her baby:

For our last day, we drove back down the coast to the airport. It was pretty uneventful, but we did get a last look at the ocean before flying back to the middle of the United States.

One last Africa related post is upcoming where I wrap it all up!

But the three of us met, along with Beth’s husband Mike, and ran the loop. The Beths are both triathletes and Mike is training for his third Ironman, so I’m the soft athlete of the bunch. Mike thru in a detour so he wasn’t too slowed with our pace and the two ladies attempted to run my legs off, but I held on enough to finish with the pack. At the end of the run my Garmin read 3.33 so I needed to make sure three was one of my lottery numbers.

Anyway, we had a good meeting and even though the run was insufferably hot, the nice thing was that when you quit running, the weather is quite nice. Mike was good enough to take our picture next to the Giant’s foot.

Thanks to Beth and Mike to coming down from Minnesota for our run. And thanks to Beth for canceling her business trip to make sure she was available. We planned our next get together, the Chesterfield Turkey Trot 5K in Chesterfield on Thanksgiving. I’ll see you all then!

We bombarded the attendees with discussions of Comrade’s Marathon and our trip to South Africa in general. They did a tremendous job in not acting like they were bored. Also, I was finally able to reward my cousin Kim with a pair of socks and my Comrade’s pacing wrist band. She guessed my actual finish time closer then anyone else including both my contest on the blog and the pool put together by my coworkers. Kim missed my actual time by just less than eight minutes. For this very impressive prognostication effort she received a pair of socks that were in my Comrade’s goody bag and my pace wristband that I toted through the race.

Notice Kim’s false smile, wondering what the heck she is going to do with a pace band only good for Comrades (race specific points are on the band) and my false smile wondering why the heck I’m giving it away.

On Sunday it was my birthday. No gifts. In fact, I celebrated by bringing Kathy to the airport early (she had to fly to Germany on work related stuff this week) and relaxing the rest of the day doing basically nothing.

Today before work I went in to a local chiropractor to be evaluated. The guy I visited is a runner and works with runners so he definitely has a ‘runner friendly’ practice. He has treated Kathy for her ankle tendinitis very successfully using Active Release Techniques to attack the muscles he determined were the root cause of her issues. Since my hip is not improving fast enough to make me happy, I thought I’d give him a try.

During my consultation, he had me do lunges and touch my toes (fat chance – I can’t get anywhere near my toes). He also stretched my back and pushed on my abs and hips. He has a lot of medical terms he throws around, but when he turned to his assistant and said that my right side was piss poor, I knew I had some issues. It turns out my adductors and hip flexors on the right side aren’t well balanced and my ‘core’ muscles on the right side don’t fire in sync. He didn’t watch me run, but predicted my spastic Jerry Lewis inspired running stride, so he definitely has some knowledge there.

Tomorrow afternoon, I start treatment. I’m sure it is going to make me cry like a baby. But I want to get healthier and faster and he is my next hope. My expectations are high to say the least!

I did finish McDougal’s ‘Born to Run’ this weekend. It is very well written and tells a great story. I highly recommend the book. However, I’m not going to start down that barefoot running path yet. If I was nine years old maybe, but I’ve spent my 43 years in shoes and I’m content with that path. Maybe in my next life I’ll come back as a Tarahumara or a Kenyan.

It is time to visit a witch doctor. I’ve got an appointment with a chiropractor who is going to bust out some Active Release Technique on me. I’ve not had this treatment before but Kathy has been undergoing treatment a couple weeks and it has really helped alleviate some ankle tendinitis she suffers from. The treatments are nice and painful – should be exciting!