Dr. Joe Vigil and flowers from Jeff

I got flowers at work today from Jeff! It was very thoughtful. He was wishing me luck in the race on Sunday and said he wished that he could be there.

Marathon is tomorrow! My body feels stiff and heavy but I am told that is normal. I went to the expo at lunch and they made me fill out a W-9 (the form to report prize money). I thought that was funny considering the amount of Olympians in the race. After work I picked up some groceries for having people over for dinner tomorrow night and then headed to Fleet Feet for a round table with Dr. Joe Vigil. The talk was very interesting. He said the only way he knows how to coach is through science but there are other ways that work also. Anyway it was interesting. He said they have the equipment to calculate exactly what rate lactic acid will build up in the Olympic teams muscles and what there lactic threshold is. Therefore they do the computation and tell the athlete- this is the pace you need to run. He said- there is no question- that is what they have to run- its proven that that is what they can do. He also said they have a diet of 120 miles a week. That is their job. He also said that they do all there workouts in the morning because when you sleep your joints stretch out and there is more cushioning between the joints. I asked if with there extremely high mileage whether they have any problems with there joints when they are old. He said not at all. He said that the athletes that are at that level have very good form and aren’t hurting their bodies while running. He also talked about how hard it is doing long runs with them because he has a different sports drink for each athlete based on there body weight and then he believes that they need it every 15 minutes but they get spread out so he has to drive back and forth between the men and the women for 3 hours giving each person there special drink every 15 minutes!