Friday 10/30 - 9 miles

I ran with a co-worker at lunch today and we did about 9 miles in 62 minutes. I had been contemplating running a 5k on Saturday, but this run pretty much guaranteed I wouldn't be doing that. My co-worker, Mead ran the 10 for Texas 10 miler in about 61 minutes a few weeks ago. If he seriously trained and put in higher mileage, he could probably be crazy fast. The weather was really nice out - low 60's and cloudy and lots of puddles everywhere on the ground from the storms that had passed through on Thursday night. We were planning on doing close to 8 miles, but we took a wrong turn in a subdivision and ended up adding on a bit when we came out on the wrong side. I felt pretty good today and I'm glad it looks like I'm starting to get my mileage back up there. Before we started running I was telling a couple people in the locker room about my exchange from Thursday with the security guard and about 45 seconds later a security guard (different guy) comes walking through the locker room. They probably have it bugged or something and were coming to have a chat with me. Either that or they were making sure there weren't any unruly thugs causing problems in the locker room. It was kind of amusing because as soon as the guy left everyone was asking me if it was the same guy from the day before.

Thursday 10/29 - 6 miles

I only had a limited amount of time to get my run in today so I was only able to do about 6.2 miles though I ran it in about 41 minutes. I headed out the door thinking that it might rain, but I'd rather get wet than run on a treadmill. I made it through about the first 3 miles without it really raining much - maybe a sprinkle here or there, but I could see some pretty dark clouds ahead on my route back, but I thought that it looked like they were south of my route and I'd be ok. I made it a little past mile 4 and the sky opened up and it just started pouring. Fortunately for me my skin is waterproof and I only got drenched. After a couple minutes my shirt was so water logged I just took it off and carried it since it was getting kind of annoying. When I got back to my office, there was a small overhang near the door that goes in near the gym and I wrung out my shirt and tried to wring out my shorts a little so I wouldn't be dripping all over the floor. At my office you have to use your badge to unlock the doors and get into the building. After I opened the door and was walking in I noticed one of the security guards standing inside the door watching me as I was coming in. He asked how I was and I told him it was wet out there. I sort of ignored him and started walking towards the gym and then he sort of follows me and asks if I'm going to the gym. I thought...duh, I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt and tennis shoes and I'm drenched from being outside. I thought about telling him "no, I have an appointment with the CEO and that's where I'm heading, but I was already having sort of a bad day and didn't really need to start getting into it with Paul Blart. Then he asked if I was an employee. Again I thought....duh, how else could I have gotten into the building without badging in. You were standing right there and I didn't piggyback in behind anybody else, but again I just flashed my badge and said yes and scurried on into the gym. I guess I'm glad that our security guards are paying attention and making sure no troublemaking thugs sneak into our gym.

Wednesday 10/28 - 7 miles

I got up this morning and ran a couple of laps at the park and got a total of 7 miles in. After yesterday evening's run, my legs felt even more tired today. I stopped to talk briefly with Sean about whether I should run a 5k this weekend. He said he wouldn't recommend doing it, but if I wanted to I could but don't expect to be running super fast times. I'll see how my legs feel on Friday. After I finished today's run and the way my legs felt, I think I'm leaning away from doing it right now. I averaged about 8 minute pace this morning. I probably won't run until lunch or in the evening on Thursday so that will give my legs a little more time to recover between now and my next run.

Tuesday 10/27 9.1 miles

I went out for a run in the evening after work. My legs definitely were still tired from the race and a little sluggish. The weather was really nice with temperature in the low 60's. I've run this route a few times and measured the total distance before and I have sort of rough ideas of about where each mile is, but I wasn't wearing a Garmin so I didn't get exact mile splits. The first half mile was really slow, but then my legs started to loosen up and I started cruising. I hit the first mile around 7:45 but with the nice weather, I averaged about 7:00 pace for the rest of the run and finished in just under 65 minutes. Aerobically it was very easy and I could have had a conversation the whole way if I'd been running with someone. My legs were tired, but I never felt like I was pushing too hard on them.

Monday 10/26 - No run

Tired Legs + Rain + Laziness = no run It probably would have helped my legs to run a few miles easy, but eating chocolate chip cookies to celebrate my race seemed more appealing at the time.

Houston 1/2 marathon 1:16:24 - 5th overall (PR)

I more or less stuck to my gameplan and ran a strong race and PR'd by over a minute. I had a little finish line mishap which cost me 5 or 6 seconds, but fortunately it didn't cost me any places. Last night I found out I'd be getting to wear one of the Kenyan Way Elite singlets for the race so I knew I'd better not run slow. My plan was to start in the 5:50's and then pick it up and finish strong. Race conditions weren't ideal - temperature started in the mid 60's and fairly humid at the start with some headwinds on the 2nd half of each loop. The pack took off and I sort of found myself in no man's land (like usual). I hit 5:50 for the first mile which was as fast as I wanted to be, but there was a fairly large pack of probably about 10 guys pulling away from me, but I was committed to sticking to my plan. The course was 3 loops on Allen Parkway which is a pretty tough course with 4 decent hills on each lap as you drop under the Waugh and Studemont overpasses.

The 2nd - 4th miles are a little slower as you hit the hills on Allen Parkway and it seemed like we hit a headwind as we turned around and started heading back. I it 5:56, 5:57, 6:02. As soon as I saw the 6:02 I knew that I needed to pick the pace up. I was running with a couple of guys, but I put in a surge and dropped them and started catching a few guys who had been falling out of the pack ahead. I hit mile 5 in 5:47 and then got a little too excited on mile 6 as I reeled in a couple of guys and I hit 5:36. I could see Gerardo Mora, Tom King and Rudy Rocha all in my sights ahead and my goal was to catch them over the next couple of miles. Mile 7 was 5:48 and then I hit 5:41 in mile 8 as I caught and passed those three guys. I could see Sam Rodriguez and another guy 20 - 30 seconds ahead and my goal was to catch them by the halfway point of lap #3.

I hit mile 9 in 5:45. Sam had pulled away from the guy he had been running with and I was closing the gap on the other guy but Sam was pulling a little farther away from me. I caught the other guy before mile 10, but I missed the mile 10 marker. The one thing I don't like about the looped course is that I am lapping people for almost half of the race. They were pretty good today about leaving a lane clear for the faster people to run in, but you can't always run the apex of the corners and you end up having to run a little farther and it is really difficult to grab water at a water station with all the people who are walking through there. My mile 9 - 11 split was 11:30 so I'll just assume I hit 5:45 for each of the miles, but I suspect it was probably more like 5:42/5:48 since I probably would have been going a little quicker as I was catching somebody in mile 10. I was pretty exhausted when I got to mile 11 and I didn't feel like I had much in the tank to really pick up the pace and I was just trying to keep running fast and not fall off pace and get passed by anyone. At the last turn around, Sam looked really strong and I pretty much knew I wasn't going to catch him. Mile 11 had 2 of the hills in it and was really tough as I fell back to 5:54.

At this point I knew I was almost done and just needed to push it in for one more mile. I didn't get a split at the 13 mile marker as I was trying to kick it in and I stopped my watch as I crossed what I thought was the finish line with a 6:26 for the last 1.1 and a 1:16:15. For some odd reason they had a timing mat right as you entered the chute and several people standing there so I crossed it and stopped and grabbed onto the railing. Then several people started yelling at me that I needed to keep going and I saw another timing mat and the clock about 20 meters ahead. Fortunately nobody else was close, but I was kind of ticked that they had the "false" finish line. I guess I should have seen the clock was still a little ways ahead, but when you are kicking it in and you cross a mat and there are several officials there it's pretty easy to assume you are done. If I hadn't stopped I probably would have been at 1:16:18 or so, but hopefully I'll set another PR in my next half marathon and I won't have to worry about the 6 seconds I lost.

I was really happy with a 1:15 PR in the half on this course in these weather conditions. I placed 5th overall but only came in 3rd in my age group as my age group took 3rd, 4th and 5th. I never was passed by anybody in the race that stayed ahead of me and I passed at least 10 people. I think I picked up the pace a little too much on the 2nd lap as I was passing people and I was struggling to hold on at the end instead of finishing strong with sub 5:40's which is what I had been hoping to do. All in all it was a great race.

Saturday 10/24 - 4 miles

I ran a super easy 4 miles at 8:00 pace just to loosen up and do some stretching afterwards. I've gotten about 9 - 9.5 hrs of sleep each of the last two nights which should really help me out for the race tomorrow. It looks like racetime temperature should be somewhere between 55 and 60. The race starts at 7:00 am so it shouldn't get too warm. My 1/2 marathon PR from 2 years ago is 1:17:39. When I ran that race I had no idea what kind of shape I was in and my goal was just to run 6:00 pace. I had started that race at about 6:10 pace and dropped down into the mid 5:40's by mile 10 before just hanging on the last couple of miles. Last year I ran a terrible race here. I'm not sure what happened, but I could just never pick the pace up and I ran 1:19:xx. My goals for tomorrow are to break 1:17 and hopefully be under 1:16. Breaking 1:17 would require me to average 5:52 pace and 1:16 would be 5:48 pace. The course is 3 loops on Allen Parkway and isn't the fastest course out there. My goal is to start out 5:55 - 6:00 the first mile and just gradually drop the pace each mile. I want to average 5:52- 5:55 for the first loop, 5:45 - 5:50 for the 2nd loop and hopefully sub 5:40 pace for the 3rd loop. If I can't pick up the pace then I'll get to a pace I can maintain and hopefully still come in with a new PR.

Friday 10/23 - 7 miles easy

I ran a nice easy recovery run at Memorial Park today. The weather was great out - temp in the low 60's and sunny out. I started out around 7:30 pace and finished up at 7:15 pace by the end and finished in about 52 minutes. I got a massage in the afternoon to help relax my body for the upcoming race.

Thursday 10/22 - Progressive Run

I would have preferred to run this earlier in the week with the 1/2 marathon coming up on Sunday, but I needed to have a good workout to give me confidence for the race and a feel for what kind of goal time is realistic on Sunday. I saw on Bill's blog that he and Sam had both run really strong progressive runs so I felt a little bit of pressure to have a good run. The last few times I had run progressive runs, I either really struggled to finish a mile at 5:30 or I didn't even finish the 5:30 mile which had been kind of depressing. I ran at lunch after the storms had moved through and the temperature was around 70 degrees. My goal was to start at 7:00 pace, drop 15 seconds every mile until I couldn't hit my target pace. I felt pretty good and kept feeling great as the run progressed. My splits were 7:05, 6:51, 6:31, 6:09, 5:56, 5:42, 5:28, 5:15, 1/4@5:08 pace. I felt really good on the 5:42 and 5:28 mile and felt like I could have kept cruising for several more miles at that pace which makes me feel good about the race on Sunday. On the 5:15 mile I was a little slow the first 1/4 and was worried I was only going to hit 5:20 - 5:25 pace, but I kept pushing hard and got back on track and finished it right on pace. I hadn't expected to still be going after the 5:15 mile, but I decided to see what I could do. I hit 1:17 for the 1st quarter and knew there was no way I could get my pace down to 5:00 so I shut it down there and did a 1 mile cooldown. I felt really good being able to hit the faster times that I was struggling to hit a couple months ago. The cooler weather makes a huge difference for me because the heat and humidity really slow me down.

Wednesday 10/21 - 6 miles in 40:30

Got a short run in on a treadmill after work before our gym closed since it had been raining quite a bit outside. Ran 6 miles at 6:45 pace. I had wanted to do the progressive run today, but didn't have long enough to do it so I pushed it back to Thursday.

Tuesday 10/20 - No Run

Traveled out to a field office in North Texas today and left the house at 4:45 am and didn't get back until 7:30 and was too wiped out for a run in the evening.

Monday 10/19 - Kenyan Way Hills

Finally made it out of bed for a morning run without any mishaps or excuses. Ran 2.5 mile warmup, drills and strides and then ran 30 minutes of hill circuits on the 4 cloverleafs. We ran hard on each of the 4 cloverleafs and jogged between the hills. I didn't bother timing the laps on the individual hills since it would be kind of tough to compare. I started out the first lap at a quick, but not too hard pace and picked it up and was flying by the end of the workout. My overall lap times weren't changing much, but I was definitely running a lot faster by the end of the workout on the hills. Ran a 2.5 mile cooldown back to the house after the workout.

Sunday - 5 miles

I went out this evening for an easy run and cut it short after my legs just felt dead. I averaged a little under 7:30 pace for 5 miles, but decided to head home instead of running one more lap. My legs felt really good after the long run yesterday, but I could feel them today. I'm going to run the morning hills Monday morning so hopefully my legs will be a little fresher then.

Saturday - 18+ miles

I set my alarm for 5:15 when I went to bed last night and I woke up a few minutes before 5:00 this morning and looked at the clock and decided to go back to sleep for 15 - 20 minutes until the alarm went off. Next think I know I'm waking up and looking at the clock again and it is after 6:00. Turns out I accidentally set it for 5:15 pm instead of am. Since it was already after 6:00 and I missed the start of the run I decided to go back to sleep and run a little later in the morning since I'd be running by myself anyway.

I left about 8:45 and started the run. I saw Sean out at the high school cross country meet on the bayou near Memorial and Shepherd and he asked why I didn't get up and run with the group like I should. He told me there were still fluids at one of the stops on the route so I ran down the route the to Hermann Park and Rice University. When I started the run the temperature was in the low 60's and it was sunny out and felt really nice out. This was the first long run in a while I've actually worn a shirt for. There were several drinking fountains around Hermann Park and Rice so I didn't have any problems getting enough fluid. I felt pretty good and ended up averaging about 6:48 pace for the run. I think when I was trying to cross through the roundabout and get from Hermann Park back to Montrose on the way home I must have thought I stopped my garmin and then when I hit the button to start it I was really stopping it. I didn't discover it until I was back just past Stanford and Westheimer. According to the map it is over a mile and when I finished the run my Garmin said 17.5, but I think I ran somewhere around 18.5 or a little more. The 7:29 mile that was way out of place was high because the clock was probably running for 45 - 50 seconds while I wasn't going anywhere. Based on the mile times around it I'm guessing I ran that mile in the mid 6:30's.

My splits were 7:23, 6:59, 7:23, 6:52, 6:51, 6:55, 7:00, 6:52, 6:56, 6:57, 6:48, 6:39, 7:29*, 6:31, 6:27, 6:36, 6:08, 6:05 (last 1/2 mile pace)

One disadvantage of running later in the morning is there is more traffic out so I ended up have to stop briefly numerous times to cross a busy road and usually at 6:00 am there isn't any traffic out to slow you down. My legs felt pretty good for having run 18 miles. I think the cooler weather contributed a lot to that because I didn't sweat near as much as usual and sometimes on the warm days my legs start cramping after I finish the run but they felt fine today. I hope we have good weather for the 1/2 marathon next weekend.

Friday - 8 miles easy

I went out for an easy 8 miles in 55:15 at 5:30 after work. The lower temperatures made a big difference in how I felt. I averaged 6:56 pace for the 8 miles but didn't feel like I was pushing it very hard. I could have run quicker, but I didn't want to push it too hard with an 18 miler coming up Saturday morning.

Thursday 10/15 - 7 miles easy

Well the good weather hadn't arrived at lunchtime when I went out for my run. Hot, humid and miserable. I heard on the radio they were predicting a high of 92 or 93 and that it might set a new record high for the day. I ran 7 miles in 52 minutes. Not too exciting, but recovery days rarely are.

I'm bummed i missed the 10 mile races this weekend. With the good weather, I think I could have gone sub 57:30 and maybe had a shot at 57:00. I'll never know though. Hopefully the weather is good for the Houston 1/2 marathon on the 25th. If the weather is good, my goal is 1:16. I really have no idea if I'm really in that shape right now or not. I definitely have the speed, but can I hold the pace that long? I guess we will find out. Congrats to everyone who raced well this past weekend. There were some very impressive times out there and Sean is an animal.

Wednesday 10/14 - Really hard run

Of course my punishment for enjoying the nice weather out in San Francisco is 90 degree temperatures and humidity back in Houston. I wasn't able to run until the evening and I headed out around 7:30, but is was in the mid-80's and miserably humid. My workout was 9 - 10 miles total with a 1600, 1200, 800, 400 with about 3 minutes recovery between each one. I did a little over a 5 mile warmup because I knew that I would really lack the motivation to add extra miles after I ran the hard workout. I felt good at the beginning of the warmup but as it progressed I felt like I was slowing down in the heat and humidity and I started thinking of all sorts of excuses to throw in the towel on the workout. I could just run another lap and then head home and that would be close to 9 miles. I hadn't run enough on my vacation so I probably shouldn't run hard. Maybe I'll just run the first mile and it will probably be slow and so I'll call it a day and cool down after that. Usually when it is 7:30 pm and I haven't started a run, I'll just skip it. I had been reading a couple of old Runner's World magazines I was catching up on during my trip and one of the articles was about how the pros train and making the most out of our hard workouts and getting quality workouts in. I also know that I need to win the mental toughness battles that I am always fighting with myself so that I don't give up late in a race when I start getting tired and experience the pain and agony of the last few miles of a marathon.

I had plugged a 16:30 5k time into the calculator that gave me my target times and I was aiming for a 5:10 mile, 3:45 1200, 2:28 800 and 70 400. I started my mile and went through the 1/4 at 80. I thought that if I'm at 5:25 when I finish I'm done with the workout. I picked up the pace and went through the 1/2 at 2:38 and then ran a 2:35 right on pace in the 2nd half to finish in 5:13. Between running around people and the footing at the park, I think I lost at least 3 seconds. I walked for about 2 minutes and then jogged the last minute for each of the recoveries. I hit 75 for the first 1/4 of the 1200 and hung on pretty close to pace the last 800 and hit 3:48. I was a few seconds off my goal, but close enough considering the heat and humidity. A lot of times I really blow up on the 1200 when I do this ladder workout and end up running the same pace as my mile. I hit my 800 in 2:31 and ran the 400 in 71. I was feeling pretty good the last 400 and felt like picking up the pace and sprinting in during the final 100, but I could feel my quads burning and I was worried that if I picked up the pace any more I might pull my quad. Since I'm training for the marathon, running my 400 in 68 isn't really going to do anything good and I've missed enough runs lately that I don't need to miss any more. I ran a 1.5 miles cooldown for a total workout of about 9.5 miles. I was pleased with my workout and happy I was pretty close to my goal times despite having to weave around people at the park and the oppressive weather. The weather is supposed to be much better this weekend as a front moves in and cools it off with highs in the mid-70's and lows in the mid-to-upper 50's.

Travels to San Francisco

I was out of town again for another quick vacation for a better part of a week to go to San Francisco to watch the Presidents Cup golf tournament and play a couple rounds of golf with some of my old friends I grew up with. It was really awesome getting to watch players like Tiger, Phil, and Vijay tee off five feet in front of me. It's cool seeing the players in person, but it's tough to actually keep up with what's happening in the various matches. We watched the tournament on Thursday and Sunday and played golf on Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately for my training, my running usually falls off a little while I was on vacation. I was able to run every other day and I put in some tougher workouts, but nothing can substitute for a quality week of high mileage. My best two runs were one where I did one run on a treadmill and knocked out 6.4 miles in 40 minutes. I did another hard workout where I did about 3.25 miles of 30/30 in 17:40. The weather for running was great out there. It was in the low 50's in the morning and I could really cruise fast in that weather without putting out too much effort.

Coming back on Monday was a nightmare. I had flown Southwest since you can check two bags without any fees and I needed to take my golf clubs with me on the trip. My friend and I took BART (the subway) to the airport and we arrived about an hour and 20 minutes before our flight. We get over to the Southwest counter area and the line stretches out farther than the eye can see. We walk and walk and keep walking and go around a couple of corners and finally find the back of the line. I don't think I'd ever seen such a long line in my life. Later I found out the problem was that the cloud ceiling was so low they had to shut down one of the runways and by mid-day all the flights were delayed by 2 hours. Since I was flying Southwest and had to make a connection I knew I wouldn't make my connection and they would have to reschedule my connecting flight. They had to do that with practically everybody which made the line inch along. After about 2 hours we finally got up to the ropes that snake back and forth by the ticket counter. There was a guy about 3 people in front of me who was the only person really making a scene and he tried to go up to the counter and get preferential treatment. I thought that they were about to actually help him just to make him shut up so my friend and I started yelling that he was cutting in line and they shouldn't check his bag. He kind of glared at us and then came back to his spot in line. He had a flight at 1:45 and was threatening that if he didn't make the flight he wasn't going to leave the counter. I was actually looking forward to this and hoping he would make a scene and the cops would have to come Taser him, or at least arrest him. It would have made my 2-1/2 hour wait in line a little more tolerable. Unfortunately for me he got up to the counter about 25 minutes before his flight, got his bag checked and ran off towards the security line without incident.

I finally made it to the counter just over 2-1/2 hours of standing in line and 35 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. Since my connecting flight out of LA wasn't delayed, they put me on a later flight. I asked if my bags would actually make this flight since it was only 35 minutes away and they told me they should so I headed off to the gate. My friend was also scheduled to be on the same flight to LA and then he had a different connection back to Albuquerque, but it was going to be awfully tight to make the connection, but they left him scheduled on it. We made it to LA and my friend had about 10 minutes to make his connection so he ran off while I waited and waited. I had been scheduled on a flight that stopped in Phoenix and then continued on to Houston, but it had been delayed and wasn't scheduled to arrive until 12:40 am. There was a later non-stop flight to Houston from LA that wasn't as delayed and was supposed to arrive at midnight so I asked them to put me on that flight instead. It ended up being delayed a little longer and we landed in Houston about 12:20. When I got off the plane I saw my friend had texted me and said he made it back, and he got his suitcase, but his golf clubs didn't make it. Since he checked in just behind me I felt a little better that my bags made the flight out of SF. I got to the baggage carousel and waited and waited and went to the restroom and waited some more and finally the bags started coming. Maybe all the baggage handlers had gone home for the night so the pilots and flight crew had to unload the plane. A ton of bags come out, but not mine. They let up and then another surge of bags starts coming. And then no more come and I'm standing there with about 2 other people looking for bags. What a perfect ending to a crappy day. Fortunately the lost baggage people were there and took my info and told me they would call me the next day after they came in and would set up a delivery so I finally leave the airport at 1:00 am. Fortunately I made it home safely and my bags showed up Tuesday morning in Houston and they delivered them after work on Tuesday.

Kenyan Way Hills

The morning hill workout was canceled because of all the rain, but I left work early enough to get to the evening hill workout (barely). I ran over there from my house and got to the workout just as they were taking off on the first hill. I missed the first hill and then joined in on the 2nd one. The workout was 25 minutes of hill repeats on 2 over the cloverleafs with a walk/jog recovery between them. Sam was out there so I ran with him. We would run up the cloverleaf, walk down the steep section and then jog over to the start of the next hill. The first hill took ~ 49 - 54 seconds to run and then the 2nd hill took about 35 - 40 seconds to run. It was about 90 degrees out and quite warm. It was a tough workout, but I felt really good. I had gotten a massage sunday afternoon and my legs were feeling a lot better and I felt much more rested than the previous days. At the end of the workout I added on 1 more hill to make up for the first one that i had missed early on. At the beginning of the workout, I was running about 54 seconds on the first hill and I finished my last one at 47 seconds. I'm not sure what the distance on it was, but we were moving at a pretty quick pace. After the workout I did about a 3.5 mile cooldown for a total of ~9.5 miles on the day.

Sunday - 6.5 miles

This was the most miserable run I've done all year I think. I guess the last two days finally caught up to me. I got up early Sunday morning to get my run in and it was warm and extremely humid out. It was kind of like the clouds were just sweating. This was one of those days I wish I hadn't run with a watch. I felt like I was going quicker than my watch said so it was discouraging every time I looked down thinking I'd see quicker times. My legs just felt dead today and I was pretty stiff and slow the first mile and was above 8:30. I got down to about 8:00 pace for a couple miles and then fell back off to about 8:15 pace for the last couple. I finished the run which is about the only good thing about today's run.

Saturday - 16 miles - 1:53

I did my Saturday long run by myself. I've felt a little tired and lethargic a lot of the week so I took the opportunity to sleep in since the weather was cooler. I started the run about 9:00 am and it was in the mid-70's and cloudy out. I was planning on trying to do 16 - 18 miles. I didn't take any energy gels or water with me so I was dependent on hitting drinking fountains during the route. I grabbed a quick sip at mile 2, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get to a drinking fountain around mile 6 which would have let me go the rest of my planned route which didn't have another drinking fountain until about mile 15. I knew if I went 13 miles between water stops, I was going to be pretty dehydrated and struggle. I changed my route and went back to Memorial park and got to a fountain at about mile 12, but I was pretty parched by then. I did another 4 miles, but I was slowing down enough and pretty wiped out that I decided to call it good at 16 instead of pushing myself to 18 miles. My splits were 7:38, 7:16, 7:12, 7:05, 6:58, 6:59, 6:57, 6:50, 6:47, 6:59, 6:56, 7:04, 7:14, 6:58, 6:54, 7:15 for a 7:03 average. I was fairly impressed with the pace for 16 miles since I had run a tempo run the day before.

Friday - Tempo Run

My life's been a little hectic lately. I got a promotion at work, but my life has been pretty busy trying to start working in my new position and finish off a couple of things from my old job so my running hasn't been the top priority this week. Since I didn't get a run in on Thursday, I decided to do a tempo run on Friday so I could get a 2nd hard workout in. The weather was decent out, but a little warm and sunny. One of my co-workers ran with me and planned to stick with me as long as he could. After a 2 mile warmup, we started a 5 mile tempo run. If I were running by myself I probably would have tried to go about 5:45 - 5:50 pace, but i backed off a little bit. My splits were 5:56, 5:59, 5:59, 5:56, 5:52. This was definitely more of an anaerobic threshold run than some of my previous tempo runs. I think I got going too hard on some of the previous tempo runs and turned them more into all out runs at the end. I felt nice and relaxed today and definitely could have kept this pacing going for a couple more miles or picked up the pace some. My co-worker made it to mile two right on pace and then dropped out. I did a 1.5 mile cooldown after the workout for a total of 8.5 miles.