milestones and catching up

Well, obviously I don't get on the computer on the weekends, otherwise I would have kept up with this little running review of mine. No, there is no time to blog unless I'm at work. That doesn't quite sound right although it may be painfully true.

Let's review what happened last. Thursday was supposed to be an easy 3 mile run, but I was out late Wednesday night on my last night in El Paso, so I skipped the run. Travelled all day Thursday and ended up not nearly as tired as I was at the end of the day on Monday. Friday I didn't even bother getting up to walk the dog because I was pretty comfy in bed with my wife, but there was a softball game Friday night. Because of our schedules (and I didn't want to be late this week) I got to ride my bike to the game while Glynis caught up with me after her chiropractor appointment. It was a rather vigorous 5 mile ride, and I was just hoping that my legs wouldn't give out during the game. Fortunately, they didn't.

Saturday I woke up kind of lazily. I took Charlie out for a walk, but I balked on immediately running. Because this was the day for the long run. And I was ready to try for 7 miles. The most at one time. Well, we did some stuff in the morning, and finally I got out to run in the early afternoon. It started out a little bright so I took my sunglasses. Well, about 2 miles into the run the rain came and started dumping water on me. This lasted for the next 2 or 3 miles. During this time there was some lightning and stuff. I was able to maintain a fairly regular pace, even running into the wind. But maybe running with the wind actually helped me catch back up. I don't know. Anyway, in the end I ran 7.14 miles at a pace of 8:40 for a total time of 62:02. Yeah, that was faster than intended. Maybe because it was so cool out? The refreshing rain? Hey, I was glad that it wasn't hailing out, cause that would have hurt.

So I ran the farthest that I ever have at one time, I ran in a driving rain for the first time, and my shoes got totally soaked (in addition to the rest of me). My feet were kind of hurting after all that too. I wasn't sure if it was all of the miles or if it had something to do with the water in my shoes. I'm walking fine now, though.

And this morning I was running fine. Definitely toned down the pace, making 3.32 miles in 30:50 for a pace of 9:16. This is the last week of training before "next big 5k race." Actually, this is the one where I want to break my previous PR of 25:11. All the signs are pointing me to the fact that I should have no problems setting a new PR. In fact, I just have be careful not to set too good of a new one so that it won't be so hard to get another PR the next time. Ok, that really doesn't make sense. I'm not sure at all how fast I will run this one. But I will try to follow the strategy that I did on the 10K of starting closer to the back and keeping a steady pace. I'm going to shoot for a pace at or under 8 minutes. I think I can maintain that for 3 miles.

And after this morning's miles, I officially crossed over the 100 mile mark for the month. 101.61 to be exact. So yipppie skippy. And my new shoes are at 47 miles after just over 2 weeks of use. I'm getting pretty serious into this running thing. I'll have to see how I rearrange this week's training to accommodate the race on Friday morning. We'll have to see how tomorrow goes!