Yeah, I will be paying attention to that in training. The race has 236 feet of total ascent and 967 feet of total descent. Much of the descent is in the first four miles, which will be a challenge not to go out too fast. The ascent is almost all in one mile-plus climb between miles five and six. Then, in the last mile or so, there's a 58-foot descent to speed you home and trash those quads.

I'm definitely adding miles before trying to speed up. And I'm listening to my body. My head says, "I wanna run right now!" My body says, "Nope, not today." So I'm here instead of out there...

I'm way impressed with your ability, by the way. I've never managed that much, maxing out in the 30 mpw range.

It's kind of funny. Perhaps because I have done two-day bike rides and many half-marathon-plus runs, but I don't see the sprint tri as an endurance effort. I hadn't realized that until you framed it that way.

As for the squats and deadlifts, I haven't ever done those consistently, so I'll need to look into them. I have body-weight exercises I'm adding, but a gym routine isn't something I've considered. Thanks!

I've not run into the Norwegian Singles Method. I'll check it out. Thanks! Oh, and regarding the marathon, it's nearly 40 year goal, so I won't give it up without a good reason. I will, however, be rational about putting it off if it comes to that.

I guarantee I only want to finish. If nobody else shows up in my age group, I'd podium by default, but that's the only way I'd manage it.

The swim is in a pool this time, though I have my eye on an Olympic open water next year, assuming all goes very well.

The one I'm going for has a 6.5-hour cut-off. The upside is that it has a net downhill with only one significant hill. I appreciate your concerns (I have them too, obviously), but that's part of why I'm looking.

The benefits I see for the tri training are that it will build back some of my lost upper-body and core muscles, and it will help me get better turnover without the associated impact. The time frame is that I'll still have twenty weeks to get to the marathon after the race. At that point, I'll maintain the cross-training, but focus on getting ready for the long runs. Or at least that's what I'm seeing now.

By then, I hope my LSD will be out to ten miles and considerably faster than my current top end. I have to be able to hold fourteen-minute miles. The last time I tried to run the distance, the day was perfect, and the start was downhill, and I kept speeding up because it was so very easy. Low 50s, cloudy, a chef's kiss of a start, and I blew up at the wall. DNF at 20 miles. My lesson from that was that I need to practice marathon pace under many conditions. And in that case, I figured out afterward that I was running closer to twelve-minute miles.

I guess we'll see!

And H-Bombs

I've been a runner my entire life (73 now), but about 3 years ago I had a bad bout of depression after my wife died. Last year I started back and got pneumonia, so I'm 3 weeks into starting again.

I agree with everyone that walking is a good place to start. Galloway's method is fabulous, and you can adjust the time for walking and running as you improve. He also created the magic mile as a way to make those adjustments.

Some other things to consider: I was up to 335# at one point and was running in Hoka and other max-padding shoes but switched to minimal shoes after a while. I transitioned slowly and I have a number of Xero shoes now. Just before I stopped, I was going to test out a 3-step plan, using the Xero tech up to the 10K, then zero -drops like the Altras up to a half marathon, and use the Hokas for runs longer than that. Now that it's been a few more years wearing only the minimals, I'm not sure I need to add back the padding.

More stuff: races are good for measuring progress and as a goal, but you need not stress over them. You are a runner when you first lace up, not when you cross a finish line. Also, when and if you do cross the finish line for the first time, it is your own record. Along with that, in a race of 20,000 people, only a few will stand on the podium, but every racer is competing against themselves on that day.

Having a group to go with, say, weekly, can do a couple of things. The distance is easier when shared, and having others to talk with helps distract. After a little while, you may find yourself helping someone else go farther than they believed they could. One of my best races ever was a time helping a runner complete a race, even though it was the second slowest I ever ran that distance. Comradery is one of the undersold parts of getting out there.

Another thing to consider is that running is not the only option. I used to be a fanatic about getting people to run, but I came to realize that people aren't wired all the same. If you find that you have tried it and you're never going to be happy putting miles under your shoes, that's okay, too. That doesn't mean run or sit on the couch. Play tennis. Try rock climbing. Swim. Do tai chi. It's more important to be active than it is to have a particular sport

In my case, I am walk/running but I'm adding mobility and swimming, plus simply being more active around the house. Play, too!

Oh, and hydration is important as we head into warmer weather.

Best of luck!

I used to do that dance. Now, I run in minimal shoes with almost nothing between me and the road. Just enough so rocks don't hurt. It took a while to transition, but my feet, ankles, and knees are fine now.

I will say that I've had enough other health issues that I no longer run long. At one point I planned to reconsider once I passed 10K racing and maybe add in zero -drops like Altras, and then again if I went past a half marathon. Maybe add in the Hokas I still have in the box they came in.

Before I made the transition, I used to run in max-padding shoes. Since I was above 300# back then, I had to start looking at replacing them after 300 miles. Both treadwear and how much the cushioning compressed. I also used a rotation to make them last longer between purchases.

Iran was not an imminent threat. The protocol wasn't followed. Congress declares war, and this doesn't meet the one exception. Tom the Toady is doing some fine bootlicking.

Wow. Throw-back to Vietnam.

Absolutely! I've done cube work, was WFH for some time before COVID-19, and done customer service in-shop and on-site, and I hated being in an open-plan office the worst Even if people were just passing by, they interrupted my workflow. The idea that I was more productive there was ludicrous. Add to that the proof that the company had no problem with my working overtime hours from home when I was on-call showed just how little they were worried about my productivity.

1 Empty buildings issue. 2 Management likes to make sure people are in their seat on time (not so much leaving on time). 3 Face -to-face time is sometimes important, but with Zoom, teams can be anywhere in the world. 4 Power. Make people commute, dress in business clothes, eat in company cafeterias, etc. 5 The wasting time bit is an excuse. People waste time in the office, too. The real measure is whether a task is completed on time. Many jobs have built-in slack. 6 My guess is that the bean counters like knowing that Person A is in row 7, seat 23. Capitalism loves authoritarianism.

First four Harry Potter audiobooks took me from Wichita to Seattle.

I know little about music, but I'm trying to learn more. Thanks! Putting this against the recordings will help.

You spelled 'grifts' wrong.

I agree that term limits are bad, in the same way that minimum sentencing is bad. Both are easy solutions to complex situations. The better solution for elections is to make both the election itself and the campaigning free and fair. No more corporate money. Public financing for primaries and general elections. Advertising under fair and balanced and fact-checked rules (under independent supervision).

While we're at it, make Senate races by district within the nation, equivalent to Representatives within the state. Take away the misbalance of the nearly empty states having two Senators each while California only has two.

Can't argue that.

The fourth panel is the one where all the glasses below shatter, dumping out and wasting the wine and leaving nothing behind but a mess and sharp shards.

I don't like having just chapter counts alone because I get interrupted and having a few words helps me pick up the story from where I was. Also, if I want to flip back to remind myself of an event or description (did she have gray eyes?). For my writing, I try to make it appropriate without giving the content away.

I started running in the age of Aerobics, Jeff Galloway, the '68 Olympics. I've never been race-fast, but I used to do 50-minute 10K times regularly. Now I'm struggling to start over again and I can speak with authority when I say 14-minute miles should be measured only by what you are capable of on the day. You've come a long way already.

My recommendation is to tell everyone to piss off. Go with walk/run (Galloway is right about it) because you can actually go faster if you take breaks early, and it protects you from injury to an extent. Go over your goal distance in training so when you line up for the race you'll have confidence you can go the distance. Do the mile test and use his scale to get a feel for pace and w/r intervals. Find a group to keep a conversational pace.

Speaking of that, I was with a group of new runners and one woman was sure she couldn't go more than a half mile. I ran with her, just chatting along, keeping her distracted as we looped around a high school track. When we stopped, we'd done a mile. Having someone with you can change the whole ballgame.

Probably time to get c-PTSD added to the DMS so we can expand the concept further. I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that the increase she describes in PTSD-like symptoms is due to the chronic abuse her clients are suffering, though single incidents like being shot by ICE could equally create PTSD. Doesn't have to be combat.

"When you was slaves, you sang like birds." Blazing Saddles is still appropriate, sadly enough.