I got to run with SD2 out to Goodhue, which was nice. Before I found out I was going to run with her I had planned on doing at least 8.0, so I could get my 30 miles for the week. However, with the opportunity to run with Christie, I was not sure of how many I would get in.

I was pretty sure that she wasn’t interested in running that far.

The temps to start were chilly (hats and gloves), with a headwind out to Goodhue Road, so it was a bit harder than usual. We talked a little, but it was more a nice companionable run after the first mile. The pace was right where I wanted it to be all the way out. All I know was that it was nice to run with someone else for a change.

When we were just about to Goodhue Christie said she was doing to stop there for a minute. She had told me several times while we were running together that I could go ahead and that she planned to walk a lot on the way back. So we hadn’t really planned on doing the entire run together from the start.

So I turned left and headed down towards the Pond Road.

I was feeling really good, but didn’t pick up the pace all that much. Along the Pond Road I just cruised along. I knew that I was going to slow the pace a lot coming back up the bigger hills, so I was not trying for any land speed records.

At the bottom of Bartlett Hill, my right heel started to bother, but it wasn’t all that bad, so I kept going, but it continued to bother just enough that I didn’t want to do more than getting an even 9.0 miles just past the house.

When I took off my shoes my right sock had a huge hole in it, so I wasn’t surprised that the right heel bothered. Once I saw how my sock looked, I think I was more surprised that I didn’t have bigger issues with the right heel than I did.

I did get to run longer in the Liberty ISOs and they did just fine. The run would have been even better if my old socks hadn’t gotten that huge hole in the heel, but I have feeling that an old body is probably more to blame for how my feet feel towards the end of longer runs than the shoes I wear. I just have to be willing to actually admit it. 😉

The run itself was not anything special, it was all about putting one foot in front of the other, but it was nice to run the first part of the run with Christie.

Something is going on with WordPress, I am not able to upload photos today? I will add them later.

This morning was the first real frost of the Fall or at least the first one where I had to scrape the windshield before heading out.

After yesterday’s good 8.0 miler where the Breakthru 4s did everything they were supposed to do. I didn’t want to do anything too overly difficult or long. Which meant that today was going to be something shorter and fairly easy.

But first Bennie and I took a trip to Augusta for a walk on the wild side over at Bond Brook.

I finally figured out where the other trailhead was near the bridge and we walked that trail until we got to the service road.

Once we got back to the other side of Tall Pines, I found a trail and we walked back down those trails until we got back to the bridge. We walked for about an hour and now that I have figured some of the newer to me trails out a little better, I will probably head back down there a few more times before the snow flies, only the next time I have a feeling I might do a run.

Speaking of running.

I didn’t get to run until a later in the afternoon, I had to get in lunch, my daily nap, some outside chores and just relax a little. I figured that a nice 4.0 miler would be about right.

Also I wanted to try out the Saucony Liberty ISO’s with a different insole to see how they felt. The Liberty’s feel just too darn firm for me, so I took the Ortholite insole out of my Salomon Sonic RAs and put them into the Liberty ISOs

Now I won’t say that it solved all of my issues with them!

However, within the first quarter mile, I could definitely tell a HUGE difference. I have never had a pair of running shoes feel this different, just by putting in a pair of insoles. They went from a harsh for me ride to a where they were comfortable. The rest of the run was more forgetting about the shoes firmness and just running.

Which gets me to the next issue with the Liberty ISOs, for me they seem to have a particular stride that they work best with and I can tell pretty quickly when I deviate from it. When I am hitting stride in them correctly, they are quiet and smooth, unfortunately, when I am off just a little they feel ungangly and I find myself fighting to get back to the proper stride again.

It might be that I just need to run more often in them, but…

Even so, I ran well in them, enough so that I had my 2nd fastest segment on the flats before Stevens Hill (just a second off my fastest time down there). My times didn’t end up being that fast, but at the same time I wasn’t attempting to run hard, but to run consistently…well except for that segment.

So the Liberty ISOs are a faster shoe, even though they are a heavier shoe compared to others in my rotation. So even though I have to fight to get the “right” stride, now that they feel more comfortable with the changes I have made to them, they are doing well by me.

Which I find fairly funny, because the Breakthru 4s while comfortable are not a shoe that I easily run faster in, they are over an ounce lighter than the Liberty ISOs. Sometimes it is more about how the shoes run, than how much they weigh.

Actually it was a pretty good day and I learned a lot about the Liberty ISOs and the trails at Bond Brook, so I consider it a very successful day

Today was a really great day for my Dad and I.

We made a road trip up above Greenville to let Dad and yeah, me as well…relive, re-visit, remember and retell things from days gone by. We visited a place that has been the locale of many stories that we have and also where my mother’s ashes were scattered nine years ago this week. I may have gotten some crap in my eyes from the wind blowing so hard off the lake.

Once we got to Greenville it started to rain pretty steady, but once we got up to the lake and got out of the van, it stopped raining and the sun tried to come out for minute. Yeah, it was just coincidence. 🙂

However, it is hard to believe that it has been that long since Mom died, but it has. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was talking with her, getting her advice or perspective on something that I was thinking about doing. I still miss her more than I will ever admit.

Another reason that we went up there today is that Dad’s health is not great and he doesn’t really have a lot of hope for any improvement going forward. He is doing better than we ever thought he would with all of the health issues he has, but as he said today “Everyday I wake-up, its another great day.”

He is a tough old Bastid, but he pretty much admitted that he thought this would probably be the last time he gets to go up there alive. I tried to dissuade that line of talk, but he is a realist and knows himself better than anyone else. Plus what I am seeing each time I go up to visit…well we will see.

While riding up we talked, Yankees (he’s a big fan) / Red Sox (I’m a big fan), Patriots, some politics, and remembered things. But mostly, I simply listened and I think that is what he wanted more than anything – he wanted to talk. He kept talking and I learned a lot about things that I thought I knew about, but like they say I got the rest of the story – at least from his perspective. 🙂

Up at the lake, we talked some more, had some quiet time together. Then I needed to take a walk to collect my thoughts and he needed time to himself with his wife, his emotions and their memories.

After leaving the lake, we talked some more, stopped for lunch in Greenville and drove home. The conversation was more of his memories of how he grew up and the people in his life. The two hour trip back to his house seemed to take about half the time it took to get up North.

Neither one of us are overly demonstrative kind of guys when it comes to showing emotion, but we hugged, told each other how much we loved one another and I think I might have gotten something in my eyes walking back to the van.

At that point after driving around for almost five hours and being on emotional overload for most of it, I needed a run.

So I headed over to Newport parked at the Hannaford and ran around the outskirts of town.

It wasn’t a fast run and that isn’t what I needed, I just wanted to get out move around someplace that I was very familiar with. I grew up on those streets and as I passed places that mean something to me, they took on a different look after talking so much with Dad earlier. Especially when running by my Grandparents old house and the house I consider my home over on Elm Street.

After that I still had to drive home. I put over 270 miles on the body today and by the time I did get home I was spent emotionally and physically. However, I believe that it was one of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life and I think that my father enjoyed the day as well.

Whatever time any of us have left on this little blue marble, I believe we need to remember what is important and that life is not always easy or even fair, but it is what we make it, based on the choices we make each day.

Today, I made a pretty good choice. 🙂

Yesterday, I took a day off from running and went North to spend some time with Dad. It was a great visit and we talked about a lot of things. Yeah, including politics, usually one of those third rail subjects for both of us. You see he is a lifelong Democrat and I for most of my life was a pretty moderate Republican.

Now things are sort of reversed he was for a long time a die-hard Trump supporter in an area where there is a LOT of support for the Republican platform. Me, I would be called a liberal leaning Republican with damned Independent ideas, who is registered to vote in the Green Party (talk about mixed up) in a more Liberal leaning area. So we tend to not discuss politics on a regular basis in order to keep the peace between us.

Yesterday that sort of changed. As we danced around talking about the political crap going on from all the major parties. We were amazed to find that many of our thoughts were the same although we are coming to our conclusions from different directions.

1. President Trump is part of the problem and most likely not part of the solution. Although Vice-President Pence brings his own set of issues, not the least of which is how much would he bring his religion to the White House. However, Trump’s continuous grandstanding and petty meanness towards anyone who dares to disagree with him is only making the Country more divided along the ideology and purity of party lines. We both agreed that his Twitter account needs to be deleted, never to be seen again. Trump probably is not the only President who was/is/will be an arsehole, but with that Twitter account, everyone gets to see how much of one he actually is.

2. Neither of us bother to watch much news from anywhere other than the local channels anymore. He was a big watcher of Fox and I tended to veer towards CNN. We both agreed that ESPN and NESN are more enjoyable and probably more reliable in their reporting.

3. That Judge Kavanaugh with his most recent testimony before the Senate panel, did not show the restraint, humility or honesty that either of us would expect from someone that was going to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh came across as an angry kid, who had a temper tantrum because he isn’t getting what he wants.

Whether Kavanaugh is guilty of the crime of attempted rape or not, or if it was a political hit for his past work with the Starr grand jury, we the public will never know. We agreed that we disagreed on who to believe on this.

We did agree that while he will probably be confirmed by the Senate this week, despite his performance and the number of “white lies” that he extolled to everyone that he was a choir boy who never did anything wrong. However, we both believe that he will not set aside what has happened during his nomination process when it comes to his judicial responsibilities and it will shape his judicial temperament and decision making biases even more than they were before this all started. The Democrats have made a very public enemy who in all likelihood will be sitting soon on the Supreme Court.

4. We talked about too many people are attempting to re-write history to meet the standards we live by in today’s world and not look at them in the context of the time that they lived. We agreed that for the most part people of different eras in history made choices, decisions and lived their lives the best they could, based on what they knew at that time.

They did not have the luxury of our 20/20 hindsight. Ideas of right, wrong and why have changed quite fluidly over the years, sometimes we forget that. The idea of common human decency, well that is a something that is decided culturally, during that era and is probably different from our present expectations. We did agree that it is difficult to judge people from different eras based on the today’s standards.

We talked about that there will come a day when the world we live in today will be judged as ignorant and lacking by the generations to come and they will not understand the decisions that individuals made during what we think of as this so-called enlightened time in history. It would be interesting to see who are seen as the heroes and villains from the vantage point of 100 years in the future. I think that there will be a few surprises just like when we look back in history to those who we now think of as being heroes and villains.

5. That we both agree that the churches need to stay out of politics. The separation between Church and State needs to be kept strong and that the Church gaining more power is not in the best interest of anyone but the churches or those who want to use the power of the churches.

6. Politics is all about power and control and that those who have the power and money, want to keep it that way. Not that this has really ever changed, but with the power of the Internet and social media the normal power players have new competition and that is part of the battle we are all seeing, versus seeing just what they want us to see. The nastiness of local, state and national politics is on view immediately 24/7 versus in the past when news was 1/2 to an hour at night from “trusted” commentators or a day or more old by the time the newspaper or town crier got it.

One more observation

On thing that I did notice on my way home and it was something that was eerily similar to 2016, enough so that it really made me stop and think about it. All the polls and big newspapers seem to be predicting a huge democratic victory in November. Now I am not the sharpest tool in the shed or anything like that, but the number of lawns that had Republican supported signs vastly out-numbered any other political party.

I noticed the same thing back in 2016 and like many others was shocked by the election results. Based on what I am seeing driving around the backroads and listening to conversations going on around me and yes, even on Facebook. This time I will not be as surprised, if against all the polls, editorials and television projections/predictions that the Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate. There is more Republican support out there than people are being led to believe.

So I expect more than a few “surprises” this November. Not all of them will be what I want, but it will be what the voters decide.

The reality is that

My Father and I had some pretty good conversations about a lot of things that we usually do not talk about and realized that we have more in common than not. Which is something that I have a feeling that if more people actually talked, listened and took time to look beyond their screens or perfected for media personalities and attitudes, that would be the case.

Talking about politics, religion or anything else that is controversial comes with risks, but if we are unwilling to do so and we will continue to elect politicians who espouse simple solutions and grotesquely negative characterizations of those who do not agree with their vision of the world, then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Yeah, I do wonder who will be seen as the heroes and villains a hundred years from now. It might not be the people we think, then again it might just be that some of us see things from a different perspective.

I did not go to the Rise ‘N Shine 5K in Augusta this morning. Right now there is just too much going on and I don’t have the extra umph left to race for right now. Maybe in another month or so when things settle back down, but right now I am too damn tired all the time it seems to push the extra gears it takes for racing.

Congratulations to all those who did run at 6:30 this morning, you did great!

I decided to not run the race earlier in the week and when I did the long run yesterday, I knew that I wasn’t going to run race this morning. Which was probably a really good thing, since SD2’s contractor dropped off his excavator at the job site at 11:30pm last night. It woke me up and I went over to investigate what was going on and who was over there. I wasn’t too impressed with that decision of his. Didn’t get to sleep too soon after that let me tell ya.

So it was just as well I hadn’t planned on racing this morning.

Although I did run today.

Another afternoon run, it almost seems like that is becoming more the norm lately than I would like or expect, but it is what it is. At least I am still getting out there and running down the road more often than not.

A very good thing.

However, I was wondering what was going on with my right foot. When I walked around the house barefoot and turned or came down on the outside of it, there was some sharp pain flare-ups happening more often than usual. It happened enough that I wondered if I should run or not. The thing was when I had shoes on walking around, the foot felt fine and I could twist, bend my foot with my hand, so I figured that I would go ahead and start the run and see how things felt.

It doesn’t feel like a stress fracture, more like a ligament or the tailor’s bunionette giving me a little more grief than usual. I ran a longer run for me yesterday, so that might have something to do with it? It is something I will keep a close eye one and shut things down if it continues to bother.

The weather was just about perfect, so I started out real easy and the foot felt fine. So I decided to keep a steady but comfortable effort through the first 3.0 miles and if everything felt good pickup the pace a little for the last mile.

Coming back from Bartlett I saw a woman with two dogs running in the other direction. We waved and I marveled/was jealous of how well her dogs behaved off-leash. The stayed right with her and didn’t hardly look at me, but they did place themselves between us.

If only Bennie could do that…never happen he is too hyper and too damaged by his previous owners to be let off leash. He goes and doesn’t come back and we have to chase/distract him, so we can catch him again, which can take hours.

I was feeling pretty good at the 3.0 mile mark, so I picked up the pace. Nothing crazy, just lengthened the stride out a little. Enough that I got down around 8:00 for a while. As I was finishing, I did go back by the woman with the dogs again and she yelled out to me “that is a great pace you got going”. Which made me smile and of course, I said “Thanks”. It is still nice when someone that you don’t know gives you a compliment out of the blue.

The right foot felt fine the entire run, so I am not sure what is going on there. I did run in the Peg34s and they felt great for the whole run.

One thing that I did this afternoon while dog sitting was look closely at my old Saucony Zealot 3s. They are a shoe that I really like everything about except for the way the bootie was too snug on my feet and after 4-5 miles my Metatarsals felt squeezed and would start to hurt until I stopped running.

When I got looking closely at the bootie construction without the insoles in, there is not a lot of give to the bootie and I got to wondering if I put a slit on each side of the bootie if it would loosen them up enough to make them shoes I can wear without discomfort. So I did. I figured that they are useless to me otherwise, so why not?

I will wear them sometime over the next week on a run to see if they still bother. I really do like the Saucony shoe styles, but their bootie construction in the Zealot 3s just doesn’t seem to work for me. Which is just my luck, I finally find a Saucony shoe that feels wide enough, but has that something that is not quite right about it for my feet. I hate to give up on a shoe that I like so much about…this is their last chance I have a feeling.

Overall, another one of those busy arse days, but I still had time for a pretty good run. 🙂

This morning was the first morning where I had to I could see my breath, wear gloves and a mid-weight jacket when walking Bennie first thing.

It was just damned chilly.

I wanted to get a little speed work in today, but this morning things got a bit busy, so I had to wait until later in the day. By then it started to rain, not a bad or all that cold this afternoon, but I didn’t want to play on the track over Colby in the wet, so off to the gym I headed.

When I got there I figured that I would go for 5.0 miles with interval repeats at race pace. However, I was pretty pressed for time since I needed to get back home to help walk the pups out in the rain, so I wasn’t sure about actually getting to that distance.

Here is what I did:

.50 @ 7.2 mph – warm-up

.50 @ 8.6 mph

.25 @ 7.5 mph

.25 @ 8.6 mph

I had really thought about doing quarters at race pace (sub 7:00s) after that, but by the time I had gotten to mile 1.5 I needed to jump off and hurry off to the locker room for about 5 minutes. When I got back I went right back to it, but decided that half’s were going to get me done faster than quarters.

.50 @ 8.6 mph

.25 @ 7.5 mph

1.0 @ 8.6 mph — I decided to do a mile and it felt pretty great.

.25 @ 7.5 mph

.50 @ 8.7 mph

4.0/28:59

I really wanted to do that last mile, but I just ran out of time and needed to rush back to the house. However, as usual my Garmin wasn’t even close to the treadmill readouts, but it really is not a big deal.

Also I did use my Nike Rival 6s and they definitely reminded of why I liked them so much. I run well in the Rivals and if it were not for the Reebok RunFasts these would be my go faster shoes on a regular basis. They do not bother my feet and I have confidence that I could run well in them up to the half marathon distance without any issues.

It was a good workout and I worked up a nice sweat. Running on the treadmill takes more time to get the gym and back, but at the same time it gives me more control over the actual speed I am running. The treadmill forces me to run certain speeds at a more consistent pace than I ever do outside, which is a good thing.

Yep, we got a bit wet walking the dogs, but I made it back in time. 🙂