Training, Jan. 9 through Jan. 15

The basics: 13 runs, 71.4 total miles, longest run of 8.7 miles, no real sustained intensity but some "honest" stretches of at least 15 to 30 minutes hovering at or just below 7:00 pace.

My only disappointment is that I didn't get in a genuine long run, not even in relation to my modest (by long-ago standards, of course) mileage. With an eye on last Sunday's 12.5-miler, I was hoping to get in a run of at least 13 miles on either Wednesday or Sunday. But on Wednesday I was handed a last-minute work assignment that demanded a very quick turn-around, and although I could have passed on to someone else, this would have been ill-advised for a number of reasons. And on Sunday, I was going to go for it again in the early evening after spending most of the day catching up on various nettlesome obligations before remembering that I had a Date -- trivia night. I couldn't pass that up knowing my team would triumph over middling-at-best competition (which we did).

I had a funny experience on Friday, when I was chased by one of the many local hickdogs. He was not very large or menacing, and looked rather like Spuds McKenzie, but he was noisy. He was soon joined by his immediate neighbor, a Dalmatian, and by a third dog several houses down, a Pomeranian-like thing. None of them got within 10 or 12 feet of me, but among themselves they formed a very neat line of yappy pursuit.

I was reminded strongly of the failed convenience-store robbery scene in "Raising Arizona."


I almost always listen to music or podcasts when I run these days. The tunes have consisted lately of a calamitous mix of eighties pop, alternative nineties stuff, electronica and classic rock. I supplemented this with atheist-caveman-in-a-suit Aron Ra's patient, nineteen-video YouTube series in which he goes after an especially low-hanging piece creationist fruit named David C. Pack.

This week I will probably aim for 75 miles before cutting back to 60-65. When I am doing serious marathon training (and forgive me for using the present tense there) I will usually alternate two "up" weeks with one "down" week, but when all I am doing is low-intensity mileage, I go with a three-"up," one-"down" scheme unless my body tells me to drop the workload before the three weeks are up.