Last Run With A Pair Of Friends

No, it's not quite as grim as the title suggests. Tonight, I cruised a true recovery run, 4.5 miles, average pace of 9:52, using the HR monitor as a governor on speed, and it was a really nice and easy run on a very windy and much cooler night (about 45 degrees). The promised cool front has blown in, it seems. I hope the wind has died down by tomorrow morning for the tempo run. The purpose of these runs are twofold: (1) To act as sort of an "active recovery" activity between harder workouts, letting the legs roll without working them too hard, and (2) With a HR monitor, to force myself to run a purely low HR aerobic run, which by some voodoo, helps with various respiratory numbers, including increasing my body's ability to process oxygen at higher and lower speeds, etc. I don't pretend to fully understand Purpose 2, but I've read about it in more than one place, so it's something to include in the Weekly Plan.

The "Last Run" title regards my ninth pair of Mizuno Wave Creations, which tonight crossed the 350 mile mark (353.88 miles, to be exact). I took my first run in them on September 16th, 2004, and tonight they served me for the last time as running shoes. Just as in many fields, there is a Mandatory Retirement Age for running shoes, and for me, I start really feeling the pounding at 350 miles. Trying to scrape an extra 10 or 20 or 50 miles from a pair of running shoes has always seemed to cause problems with my legs, so at 350, they are retired to become casual shoes or yardwork shoes (after a ceremonial washing with towels and such in the washing machine). This pair were on my feet for a series of great races this fall, all personal bests, as well as a dozen or so really fine long runs with my Gazelles friends. Countless other workouts of various lengths and speeds were covered as well. I'll move my timing chip to the newer pair of Creations (about halfway through their life, at 165.8 miles), and will make a trip to RunTex in the next few days to get my next pair of the same Mizunos to start working into the shoe rotation. It is very nearly a mirror of Real Life, as the old make way for the new, but I think that would be straining the analogy to ruminate upon this any further, wouldn't you agree?

5 weeks, 4 days to the Freescale Marathon...and counting.