Good morning Mary, What's happening to the English language? 10.17 miles of hills @ 9:17 pace...completely uneventful run. Dreary day but nice running weather so I shouldn't complain...32 & cloudy, no wind. Good runs to everyone today.

It's low 30's here and I expect it to get warm today, as it often does here, but I like to get my run over with so I will head out now. dg, I am hesitant to give you a formula for your question last night because you have had injury problems and it is hard to predict the ratio between your LR and your weekly mileage. Your tolerance for a lot of mileage may be questionable. You must grow it slowly and listen carefully for twinges or pain. In my own case my weekly mileage right now is 30 mpw and I have my LR up to 8, but I have never given any thought to these two numbers as being in some goal ratio to one another. I almost had house guests last night! Erika and husband got stuck for a bit at DFW and we spoke by phone. We told them if they couldn't get out to call us and we would be happy to put them up here. What fun that would have been! But the plane took off, albeit much later than they would have wished, so I will look forward to meeting her another time. Spareribs

Dg wrote:

Too soon? ...I hope not. I started Sept. of 2006 & have been DL'd about half of the time. am about twice your age. twice as slow. but signed up for one too.

Yes! Now that she has let the cat out of the bag, I can admit that she will be running that marathon with ME – Yippee!! Nono - excellent news for you, too! This is not to say that everyone needs to feel driven to run a marathon here, just that it is indeed a momentous challenge and it is always exciting to see someone take that on. Good luck to both of you and BE CAREFUL! Ribs had some great advice at the end of yesterday's thread about this. ETA - and today, too. Sarge – lovely picture of you and DW yesterday. Mary – hang in there, mojo comes and goes, and this is a tough time of year for it. Today was interval day, but we are having freezing rain (again), so I did this on the TM: 1 mile WU (5 minute slow-to-fast segments – 6.0, 6.3, 6.6, 6.9, 8.0 mph) x 4 1 minute walk (1 min. 8.0 mph [7:30]/1 min. 6.0 mph [10:00]) x 5 1 minute walk (1 min. 8.0 mph [7:30]/1 min. 6.0 mph [10:00]) x 5 Then 1 mile at 8:49, plus short CD made 7 miles. I’ve been doing this workout off and on for how long? Weeks, months, maybe? And yet today was the FIRST time I didn’t feel like I was going into cardiac arrest or something close. Today felt tough, but do-able - what an awesome feeling, to finally see some improvement!

Well I am betting the last 18 or so hours of my life have been a lot more "exciting" than yours and not entirely due to my 20 mile run yesterday! Sorry, you are going to get the whole story and not the one line recap here. I went out and felt fine. So good that I had to tell myself not to push too hard early on as there was a long way to go with the last 3 miles home all up hill. I got to about mile 11 and met a very nice guy and ran a mile or so with him. Around mile 14 my GI track felt queasy, nothing too odd for running but not quite right either. Fine, my long route goes by the local summer tennis courts/winter ice rink since it is open for such problems all year. I go and see blood where it should not be and a color I have never seen before. I manage to keep myself to a semi-panic. My father died of kidney cancer, so semi-panic is the best I can do. I did not see the source. Maybe it is nothing. I head home. Now I feel awful and a semi-panic is not calm either. Once home I drink as much water as I can to find out as fast as I can if a full blown panic is in order. At about 6:30pm I find out. Time for a full blown panic. I get dressed as fast as I can. My DW arrives just then from the commute home and I tell her I am going to the ER and why. She is remarkably calm. If you knew her tendency to go "code red" you would find that rather extraordinary. Off we go. At the ER they decide to see me right away. Never, ever a good sign. They take samples and I wait for the tests. They ask for a second sample. Here is what they found. They did the same test four times on two different machines. Each reading was totally different. (For those of you that think a number from a lab is definitive, let this be a lesson. All equipment produces "machine read" errors some of which can be quite dramatic.) The doctor says he suspects it is an infection and gives me something for that. But he tells me to see my primary care physician (who coincidently is his too) and get a further examination and a MRI scheduled to make sure it is not some form of cancer. I have an 11:45 appointment this morning with my primary care doctor. This whole thing does remind me of something that happened to me in 1997. I developed a dry cough that winter that would not go away. I went to the doctor who said either I had lung cancer or some infection that seemed to have a 20 syllable name. I suggested we go with the infection for now since if it is lung cancer I am dead. He said that was about right. Turned out to be neither. It was an infection, just a different one. I repeated this to the ER doctor last night and said since the circumstances are pretty similar we should go with infection for now and hope that is right. He did laugh and for now I am going with that. The MRI? Better safe than sorry. If this is bladder or some other cancer it is not necessarily fatal if caught early enough. That was my father's problem, they caught it late. It is a long story. What I will say is that I will never, ever use a health plan from a HMO as a result. See I told you my last 18 hours or so were probably more exciting than yours! Well that is my story for the day. I hope all of your stories are a lot less eventful and filled with happy and healthy runs.

Geeze Twocat, that's scary. I hope you get some good news from this. Spareribs

Whoa - Twocat! I sure hope your tests turn out okay. Were you experiencing any other symptoms? Since it came on so quickly, maybe it will turn out to be an infection you can clear up quickly. Prayers and good wishes to you today, and please let us know as soon as you hear something. Poor Erika - she has the worst travel luck. I hope they make it back home before spring. Hey, Mary - welcome back! With the kind of weather you and I have been having lately, mojo is definitely in the tank. We got 4 inches of snow last night, now the sun is out, it's -5 and the wind is pretty stiff. This winter has been absolutely unbelievable - even by Wisconsin and Michigan standards. I did 5 miles on the eliptical this morning, then a half hour Pilates class followed up with 2 miles on the dreadmill at a 9:15 pace. I got an early Christmas present for next year: I registered for the Disney half next year! The price went up to $120, which I think is totally ridiculous. The CellCom half here in Green Bay is only $50.00. I guess you have to pay for the "Disney experience." Today is DS#1 and his wife's birthdays. For their gifts, I got them each a gift certificate for our local running store to go get some new shoes. They're both getting back into running after being pretty active during their high school/college years.

Twocat - geez. Best of luck on that. Erika - when you read this, welcome home. Are you there yet? As always with speedwork, I have to fight with myself to do it. Like I said once before "95% of the time I do what I'm trying not to think about failing to do". (Tramps thought this was funny way back when and sent me a nice poster which I am reading from on the wall of my office) Tempo: 5 mi Pace(HR): 7:22(167). Splits: 7:25(161), 7:25(16, 7:22(167),7:20(170), 7:18(170). Overall: 10.1 mi, 1:19:52, 7:53/mi, AHR 160 23°F, but no wind, no rain, so no problem.