Dragons

That title is probably a bit much. As you would recall when we left-off in March (maybe early April? -- I'm too lazy to go back and fact check against my own blog), I was a little roughed up from our final rugby match of the season against Scottsdale. And though I took a couple weeks off (and subsequently missed out on a chance to race the Run for Your Life 5K), this actually doesn't count as one of my bouts with quitting.

In order for me to quit, I like to think there are a couple of criteria. First, I need to be running consistently. I think when I got hurt I wasn't even up to 30 miles a week on more than 5 days per week of running. Second, I need to be showing improvement. Granted, I was showing improvement -- pulling my average morning pace from a staggering 8:45 pace down to a mind-boggling 8:29 for my 3 milers. But normally I like to aim to be quitting more around the tangent of a decaying exponential curve begins to approach zero.

Allow me to illustrate with some graph I found on Google images.

Hmmm....ok. It's like this. If you consider the number of days I have been actually 'training' is the X-axis, and then my progress (on a scale of 0 to 100 here) is the Y-axis, I'd say I am most likely to quit around the (90,85) point. Obviously this scale is a little off because I never do get as good as Y=85 on this chart, but I'd say the slope at this point is about right for when I quit.

That being said, I am currently sitting at about (12,25) -- so yeah, plenty of time to get the hopes up before just stopping.

Maybe I'll come back and reference this graph in the future. I like that idea.

BTW does anyone else think Eddie Vedder looks like The Dude from Big Lebowski these days?

Anyways, this morning was my return. I did 3.9 miles around the housal area here around the 8 minute pace. It was probably so fast just because I am still fresh. My shoulder is still pretty tight and it does still hurt to sneeze or shift in my chair, but maybe I just knew I had to get out there this morning after being motivated by this article about Paula Morrison.

Not really. The Star is a rag and if anyone else carried this article I wouldn't link it to the Star. Still -- good for Paula.

Oh -- I also saw Ben Eid last night at Zinburger (I secret shop under a different name sometimes). He had a candle in his shake and I thought it was his birthday. It turns out he made law review here as he finished his first year at UA Law School. Good for Ben.

I've tried to make it pretty clear in the past that it is ingrained in my person to have problems in executing a sensible running program (or even the most insensible ones). I've also tried to make it clear that more often than not, I have no one to blame for my shortcomings than myself. Once again, this may be the case -- but I would at least like to think of myself as only conspiratorially responsible -- rather than straight-up responsible. So with that said, allow me to explain why I suspect I will not be hitting the Run for your life 5k this April.

Long-story made short (and that will have to be the case because my shoulder gets tired if I leave my arm in the bent, typing position for too long) my leftal shoulderal backal upper-armal.lower-neckal region is pretty tight and sore from our season finale match against Scottsdale. To put it simply, these guys are a bunch of pricks and I have no qualms publicly pointing out that, not only are they second-to-last in our league, they severely lack sportsmanship and common maturity. If I do end up moving to the Valley of the Sun after I graduate this December and even if I lived in Scottsdale town hall there is no way I would ever demean myself to a point where I would wear a Scottsdale rugby jersey.

See -- I could have lived with my aches, scratches, bloody nose, and huge bruise on my hip came from activities during the match -- but after about the 6th late/cheap shot from some dude who has 70 pounds on me, the shit gets a little old. So yeah, if you take anything from this post, it is that Scottsdale's rugby team is a bunch of bitches. I'm glad I scored on their asses and I am glad we beat them. I hope they die in a team-wide drowning.

As for me, with rugby over, my plans to start honing in on a more solid schedule once rugby is over has now been pushed back, probably, a multitude of weeks as I likely have bruised cartilage in rib cage. I am surprisingly upset about my lame jogging schedule being thrown off more than I am that it hurts like the dickens for me to cough, sneeze, or roll over in my sleep since Saturday. But I am trying to not let it get me down too much. Train had this same issue some months ago and he made it through. I will as well.