THOU SHALT BE A COMEBACK

I didn't feel that great from the get go.   I was okay the first 9 miles then hit the wind and felt worse and sorta gave up and cruised in.  There was nobody close enough to push me so I kinda just made sure I stayed in the lead and ahead of the 1:30 pace group.   This wasn't a good race, 1:30 slower than a much harder course last month.  I know some of this is bad choices I have made in the last few weeks.  I do best when running with joy, and there has been very little of that lately.  So the next 3 weeks will be more about pulling myself together and getting my head and heart in the right place.  That will do me more good than any training.  I will probably train hard for 14 days, then taper way down for a week.  I'm going to eat right, let go of the toxic people and situations that have me in knots right now, breathe deep, pray for the peace that surpasses all understanding.

easy, no watch, it has been retired along with the scale for the next 3 weeks.  :)  I will still do some speedwork and tempo and stuff, just watchless!!

8.5 easy in the afternoon around Vanessa's school, estimate on mileage, no watch, ran easy except for about 1.5 miles when I had a fun tailwind and picked it up.  Dropped her off then did 6 ez on the treadmill before work.  Felt pretty good.  Deactivated my facebook for now and had cable turned off, actually feels good to detox a bit from social media and I need to save money if I am going to buy a plane ticket to Boston.

easy through the east side.  mileage estimate.  felt good.  enjoyed the warm sun.

Track!  A little weird to do speedwork with no watch but I feel like the effort was there.  It was a nice blustery 18mph wind on the homestretch each lap.  The second half of the workout I had to run around the massive marching band each lap but it was cool, didn't bother me and didn't bother them.

2 mile warm up, 4 x 200 with 200 recovery, quarter mile jog, then 10 x 800 with 400 recovery, then 1.5 mile cooldown.  I tried to keep it close to 5k effort for the 800s and sprinted like a madman for the 200s.  Anything to make marathon pace feel like a walk in the park.

My thoughts are that sub-3 is possible, within my capability right now, but it straight up has to hit on a cool day with no wind and on a day where I have my mojo...so if the stars align in my favor.  Regardless, I will don the watch again for the marathon and run off of feel, no looking until the halfway mark.  If I try to force a pace in the first half of a marathon I will blow up, so I will run it by feel the first half and then go to the well the second half and see what happens.  This worked for St. George, and the conservative first half payed off, although it was a little scary to know that I would HAVE to negative split to reach my goal.  Prairie Fire is very very flat, especially in the second half, so a good setup to put it at cruising speed and hang on.

8 easy.  wore my new new balance minimus that I won in the half, was a little concerned about the zero drop but turns out they felt great and were a nice ride.  I may have found my marathon race shoe.  We will see how they feel on my last long run Sunday.

easy in the afternoon.  I really love how these zero drop shoes feel when I run, will test them in a long run tomorrow.  I keep waiting for some kind of calf soreness or something to start but none so far, have probably run in Nike Frees enough that this is not a huge transition.  Ran the last half mile fast because I felt good!