1 week until the Mini

The house is crawling with sick people. Emmeline and Anneliese have been fighting a nasty cough for about 4 days and I have picked up a cough myself. It is that time of year for allergies and hay fever to act up. Liz had a stomach illness today. Not looking pretty a week out from the race, eh?

I have kept running through my seasonal alleargy attack. The last two weeks I have managed to get in 5 days of running per. I will run 6-7 (1 km each) laps around my neighborhood tonight after dinner. Tomorrow will be my last long run before race day (8-10 miles). I'll try to run several short runs next week.

Here is the mini schedule:

THURS: Packet pickup for timing chip
FRI: Dinner with the NF Team
SAT: Race Day, 7:30 start

Ready or not here I go...

Boston Marathon Monday!

I'm in Ft. Wayne tonight. I worked out on the top of the line treadmill at the new Fairfield Inn. The tradmill was complete with flat screen HD tv. I was able to watch ESPN News while I did my tempo run workout. Total for the day was 5 miles in 42 minutes. My fastest mile was 7:03, also had an 8:00 minute and a 8:19 mile to go along with an avg of 9:31 per mile on my warm up and cool down miles. The overall average was 8:24 per mile. I'd like to be around 8:40 per mile on race day so today's strong workout is reassuring.

Congrats to all of the NF Endurance team members who ran in Boston today. I hope that you had a great race and recover well. Congrats also to Kara Goucher and Ryan Hall who were each 3rd place finishers today and the first American of their gender to cross the finish line.

It's fun to RUN at the YMCA...

Work travel finds me in Lexington, KY. No Calipari sightings yet but I will keep my eyes open for him. The weather is about what you would expect for the Midwest in April, it was 73 here on Sunday and has been snowing off and on all day today. Since I didn't pack any cold weather gear I was planning to work out at the Fairfield Inn where I am staying. They don't have a fitness room but they do have a deal with the local YMCA for guests to be able to workout. I hit the treadmill for about 25 minutes then followed that up with butt kicks and high knees on the 1/16 mile indoor track. I followed that up with some upper body stuff. My workout ended up being 45 minutes total of high intensity. Not bad since I was sitting in my hotel room trying to talk myself out of working out.

Saturday I hooked up with my long run partner and we drove over to the Monon Greenway for 12 miles. We started at 9am on a very sunny 45* morning. It was a beautiful day to be outside and perfect weather for a run. The first couple of miles were a little rough and I had my doubts about making 12 miles. I got into a rhythm as we passed the Monon Center and headed south towards 465 on the path. As we were running and talking we almost missed our 91st turn around. On the way back I did take two 1 minute walk breaks. I was happy with the overall time of 1:55 for 12.1 miles. That averages out to about 9:30 per mile which projects to a 2:05:xx race time. Given race day adrenaline and aid stations (along with a few more weeks of training) I am starting to feel like a PR is not 100% out of the question. You'd have to check back next week to see if I keep on track this time after a lackluster Jan-March.

See you on the road!

One Month til the Mini

Ouch... one month until the mini. You can say that training hasn't gone quite as well as I had hoped. I've managed long runs of 8, 9, 9, 10 and 10 to date. Planning to go 12 miles this Saturday with my training partner. At this point I have no expectations for a goal time. I think I can finish in under 2:00's again but I won't be devestated if that doesn't happen. I'm looking forward to the course and seeing other people who race for NF research and awareness.