Catching Up

Wow, I am behind on my blog big time. Last week was a busy week. It seems that there was not much of anything good happening other than some bad runs..lol. We have been having political unrest at the Fire Department. Work has been nuts, finding errors made by our accountant and then fighting to get IT issues fixed. Work has been slow so that adds to the level of frustrations.

Thank god for running. Even a bad run can be good. Last week I actually blew my mileage goal but really it should have been a cut back week anyway since I did the 22 miler on the 14th. Monday was a planned rest day. Tuesday I had a fire department meeting so I couldn't run. Wednesday the weather was not the best so I opted to try Tuesday nights speed workout on the treadmill. Here is what I did:

2 mile warm up:
1-10:35
2-10:05
4x200@LT pace (I won't bore you with the times but I did them a little fast)
2x400
4x200
1 mile cool down @10:15

Overall I ended up with 4.6 miles and a pretty decent workout even if it was on the treadmill.

Thursday:
Thursday I ran my famous Freds and back 5k route. I was not feeling it at all. Not sure if it was because of the speed work or what. I know there was a lot of traffic on S. First Street which really takes the fun out of running when you have to dodge cars. I was pretty slow on this one.
Total miles - 3.36
Time - 35:30
Avg. Pace - 10:34
1-9:59
2-10:43
3-10:57
4-10:43

Friday was a planned rest day.

Saturday we ran with the crusier's as it was a planned 1 hour run and then trash pick up. The Cabot Cruisers sponsors a one mile section of Highway 89 south of Cabot for liter pick up so we do this once a quarter.

The run started out really good and somewhat fast. There were a lot of new runners from the women can run clinic so somehow I ended up in one of the lead groups. The first mile felt really good and was a 9:49. Annette started feeling kinda bad about mile 2 so I slowed down some to run with her.

After the run we all headed down the road to pick up trash. Believe it or not, this is kinda fun. You get to talk to people that you normally may not get to as they may be running a different pace or in a different group. Plus we are helping to keep the community clean so its a good public service. I still ended up with about 4.3 miles running and 2 miles walking. The average pace Saturday was a 10:05.

Sunday seemed like a disaster to me. I really wanted to do a long run at the river trail but Annette was trying to run with some of the group in Cabot so we ended up staying here. I really needed 15 miles but it didn't happen. The problem was we really didn't have a set plan. We were trying to run with others that needed different miles. We ran a very hilly route for the first 6+ miles and ended back up at the school. Brenda had left us at mile 5 to do her 15 mile run but she wanted to run at race pace which none of us could keep up with. She did it, with I think about an 8:20 pace for the last 10 miles. Thats pretty good! Annette and I ended up running with Joan for another 3 miles at a slower pace which was nice. It was actully enjoyable at that point. Why the first part of the run wasn't I don't know other than it seemed to me like the humidity was very high, even though it was pretty cool.

I ended up with a total of 9.05 miles and an average pace of 11:21. Not where I wanted to be but I'll take it. I could beat a 5 hour marathon if I could hold that which I think I can.

I am really starting to miss biking and I am hoping the weather warms soon. I can't wait to get out and ride when its warm and feel the air cooling me off. I hate riding in the cold though. But marathon training comes first right now so until April 26th, there won't be a lot of biking for me. After that, shorter runs and lots of biking!