AM - 11 miles up to work on another warm April morning. In the middle of the run I threw in a little 2 mile tempo @ MP (5:25, 5:16) on the flat section between 3300S and SHP. The other night I slept on my right knee in a weird way, so I've been babying it the last couple days... I did the tempo "test" to see how it would feel. It was fine. The only time I feel anything weird is going uphill for a long time (ie. the second half of every run to work), so I'll stick to the flats for the next couple of days. PM - 10 miles home. Making Bill Rodgers proud this week. I had a full battery of blood work done yesterday - here are the results relating to iron (which I was most interested in getting baseline data for before I start this next cycle of marathon training): 
The reference ranges are not for normal adults, but rather some data I found for elite marathon runners (from David Martin and Peter Coe's textbook). So, as expected, I'm where I want to be. An interesting fact is that in cycling, if your hematocrit is over 50%, you are automatically suspended. So you can either take PEDs, or just train really hard and get the same results :-) All my other tests came back in normal ranges. My cholesterol is a little higher than I would like it to be (darn genetics - it runs in the family, but its something that I need to keep tabs on). TSH is perfectly normal. My bilirubin was elevated, but what can you expect when you have run 600 miles in the past month? - the body is under stress and RBCs are getting destroyed all the time. I'll see the doctor on Monday, so it will be interesting to talk to him about all these tests and what he thinks they mean. In the meantime, I'll break out my physiology textbooks over the weekend.
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