Flexibility of Training Runs

One of the joys of having a high school senior live with you (and there are many joys) is you get to tag along to college visits. If you are lucky, the high school senior will pick colleges in interesting locations. Such as Vermont.

Dave has an interest in the University of Vermont. The school meets the criteria he has been using when looking at colleges, such as major choices (right now it’s between environmental engineering and nutrition, maybe Spanish), activity requirements (cross country and triathlons are almost as necessary as the majors), and the school must fulfill an interest to study abroad. I informed Dave there must be a million schools between here and Burlington (VT, not NJ) that meet such standards.

“Oh, yeah, and I like New England.”

So this weekend, the three of us are headed up north (about as straight up from where we currently are and still be this side of the border) to check out the University of Vermont. It really should be a fun weekend—the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour is on our to-do for Saturday, along with the college visit. And for $20 at Ben & Jerry’s, they’ll give you a T-shirt and a pint of ice cream.

And Sunday we are scheduled to do 10 miles. And we were going to run there (I’m talking past tense and we haven’t even left yet...enter flexibility). But last night, while Dave was plugging through chemistry, I was working on a wedding present (for the friends that got married in June…could be a Happy One Year present), and Ted was surfing the World Wide Web, he found a 5K race Sunday morning. And results from the year before show a smaller turn-out (about 150), and age groups where the winners ran in times reasonable for us to run in—it’s pushing it a bit, would be PRs, but not unrealistic for what we have been running shorter distances in.

One of the great things about running is running in races in other towns, states, even regions. So there was no question about it—our training schedule would have to be a little flexible (although I’m not sure flexibility means trading in your 10-miler for a 3-miler). I contacted the race organizer, found out that we can still register on race day (we’re just getting our butts there early so I get a T-shirt), and not only will we be able to run a race in Vermont, but we’ll be able to test out how a pre-run dinner of Ben & Jerry’s affects the run itself.

The Web is a wonderful thing.