The Chevy Chevette Putters Along!

A young non car person asked me via email after reading a blog post why I continually refer to myself as a Chevy Chevette. The Chevy Chevette was built from 1975-1984....not one of the highlight periods of quality GM products. They were trying to compete with a slew of cheap foreign competitors like the VW Rabbit and the Honda Civic. It was the smallest and cheapest car they had ever built, and it is a perennial on many all time bad car lists like the Yugo and the Edsel. It had an anemic small block 4 cylinder engine that produced a whopping 50 or so horsepower. It was a step up from the Vega, with it's aluminum engine block that got scoured in the first 20 thousand miles and had an uncanny ability not to start in the cold, but that was a previous failure. The Chevette was poorly assembled, from cheap parts, from an outdated design, but sold reasonably well for 11 years based on price alone. Like me, it was only built to run around 100,000 kilometers before being sent to the crusher. Unlike todays slew of small car marvels, it was engineered for a short life. So that is why I use it so often for comparison to the way my running body was constructed bye Rita, Bill, and God to have a more limited functional orthopedic life. Not unfair, but not someone like Amby Burfoot, who, at 66, has well over 120,000 running miles on him. Some of us are beemers, some of us are chevettes.......

Got my 4 runs in again according to plan with bits of soreness here and there (creaks in the Chevette!). Long run was yesterday evening at 12K. Hot as hell with, for us, a high level of humidity. When it is cooler I will just add one more "K" and that will approach an hour and a half which I will keep as my long run limit. Got my 7K recovery run in last Sunday and will repeat that this evening. On Tuesday I did another 8K run incorporating the Billat 30-30 for 17 minutes. Man, that just starts so easily and gets sort of pukey at the end. The 30 second sprint part starts to feel long, and the recovery 30 feels like only ten seconds. On thursday I went out for 9K, planning to do three 7 minute repeats with two minute recoveries. Was again hot and humid. Got in two, but half way thru the third, my form went all to hell, so I stopped after 4 minutes, took a two minute recovery, and then did another 4 minute repeat. Whenever my form gets funky, I promised myself I would halt the workout, as that is when I am most susceptible to orthopedic failure. Gotta keep the Chevette puttering along. I am thinking of trying a 5K in Las Cruces in early September just to get an idea of how slow I am and to use those results to set the appropriate paces for my longer intervals. We will see if I can stay healthy for another month......