"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail"

Enjoyed my 22nd wedding anniversary on Friday. Went to an interesting German restaurant (complete with accordian players and the manager wearing liederhosen (sp? -- leather shorts with suspenders!!!). Then we went to see Avatar at the Omnimax theater. Good movie--but I think it would have been better on a flat screen (we got there too late to get seats in the middle, so we sat on the side -- too much distortion in the pictures (the arrows were curved). Megan was at a state math meet, and the boys stayed at their friends' house...I can't remember the last time we had the house to ourselves. Nice.

Winter is refusing to die. Friday it was in the 70s. Yesterday it dropped into the 30s and we got a dusting of snow on the ground...with 30 MPH winds! I was too wimpy to run yesterday. Today was much better. Still windy, but sunny, and mid 40s.

Ran 10 miles on the rail trail. This is my longest run in the VFFs. The first 5 miles were straight into 20+ MPH wind. But, the last 5 were awesome! Gotta love a nice tail wind. I decided to push the pace a little on the last mile to see what I had left. 6:26. Not bad, I'll take it.

4 weeks 'til Boston. Bought my plane tickets yesterday. I'm not sure why I was pulled back to Boston. I had resigned myself to skipping it this year, but I started rereading Hal Higdon's "Marathon:The Ultimate Training Guide", and he talked about Boston, and its history...and I started thinking of all my friends heading there this year, and threw caution to the wind and decided I'm going...I still have to iron out the details on lodging, but I WILL be there on April 19th!

Ran w/ Darin. Was a nice day (55, sunny, low wind). Because I ran kinda long yesterday, we decided to go shorter. Because we went shorter, we decided to go faster (sounds logical). We decided to run our old 3.85 mile route.

 6:34,6:44,6:46, 6:53/mi for the last .85...yep, I faded a bit.

This was the fastest I've run in a long, long time. I really need to race a 5K sometime.

I also set a PR (26:09) on our course by 3 seconds (I set the old PR on 12/12/06). Darin still has the course record (25:38 - 12/1/09)

AP: 6:44

HR: 160 avg

Another gorgeous day! 60F, S wind at about 20 MPH, sunny.

Ran w/ Darin. Only had time for 5 miles, as I needed to hurry back for a Stress Management class.

Took it fairly easy today...a tempo-ish run.

Just noticing my yearly miles total is pretty low. I'm barely over 300 miles. That's not a whole lot of miles considering I've logged 2 runs of 26.2 miles in Jan and Feb. I see Smooth is over 700!!!! Way to go, Smooth! I'll never catch you :)

AP: 7:28

7:34, x BPM

7:18, 140 bpm

7:33, 144 bpm

7:49, 152 bpm (uphill into the 20 mph wind)

7:12, 155


 

Worked from home today, so I ran solo at lunch time. This is my hill workout. Ran 3 miles out, 3 miles back. 20 MPH wind, 71 F, 59% humidity.

My VFFs were starting to get a little...ripe. So I added some foot powder last night and let them dry out. After today's run, my feet feel a little beat up -- not quite blistered, but a little more wear than usual (might have been the 7:08 mile 3 downhill on the highway). All of my miles in the past 3 weeks have been in the VFFs..and I really do like them. Ordered some Asic Speedstar 4's from Holabird yesterday. I'll give them a try when they come in...if they feel great, I'll start using them a little, and will probably run Boston in them...otherwise, it will be the VFFs at Boston.

8:07, 138

8:09, 148

7:08, 144 (down the hill)

8:19, 148 (up the hill)

7:28, 150

7:19, 154

AP: 7:45 , 146 bpm

Checked BP immediately after run. 151/75, 1 minute later 144/78. (normal resting is about 125/70 for me)

Ran 1 miles laps around my place of buisiness. Darin was going to meet me out there, but his meeting ran late, so I was solo.

I wanted to run nice and easy MP miles (MP = 8:00 for my new BQ level)

7:58, x bpm

8:00, 133 bpm

7:58, 132 bpm

7:52, 135 bpm

7:59, 136 bpm

8:03, 137 bpm

55F, sunny, E5 MPH

Uggg...I guess the little rock I stepped on yesterday left a mark. My heal was a bit sore today, so I had to bag the long run. I'm not too worried, it is already feeling better tonight. I need to get in at least one 20 miler in the next week before I taper. As my training hasn't been very intense this year, I'm not putting any big hopes in PRing at Boston this year. I'm going to enjoy it as a really expensive long run with benefits :-). But, I reserve the right to go fast if all the stars align.

Ronnie (Hillbilly Runner) offered to share his room at the Hyatt-Cambridge with him and his son. Awesome. He's getting in on Sunday -- but I'm getting in on Saturday. So, most of my accomodations are working out. I'll find a room for Saturday night somewhere...even if I have to stay a little out of town. Plans are coming together.

Ronnie is going for a 3:20 this year at Boston-- I'll probably move back to his corral and run the first few miles with him -- if it's a good day, maybe I'll stick with him the whole way. He plans to run even splits (1:40 half). Ronnie ran a 3:10 (I think) at SGM..so I'm thinking 3:20 at Boston should be very doable for him this year.