The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

We got into Carlsbad at 11 last night and slept in the car.  Just so pumped up from the day of trails in Arizona that it didn't even matter.  I was pretty stoked to see some of the racing today, especially the elites later.  We ran a few miles in the morning early along the waterfront and I decided I might as well run in the masters race as sit around watching.  The registration took 2 minutes, seriously.  Amazing quick.  I felt good for about a mile and then the race hurt, lol!  It was all about holding on from then on but I'm glad I did it.  Such neat guys to run with.  I'm guessing at time and place, no clocks at the finish that I could see.  I'll update that later when they post results, but definetly slower than the 5k last week.  Now off to watch some fast folks and catch a workout later in the day. 

Just got results posted and I was slower than I thought.  16:20  Good news is, we all were.  Pete and Christian have both broken 15 every year that they run this as masters so maybe the wind played more of a factor than I felt.  Dennis ran a 14:42 on this two years ago too.

Got home at 7pm and got the second part of the workout in.  3 warm up, 12x400, 2 cool down.  I thought this would be a long weekend to enjoy since my girls were gone, but it's already gone..

Wow, where did this run come from?  I just fell into a groove on this long run and haven't felt this smooth in a long time.  Great afternoon.  24 miles, 6:38 average pace.

Easy trail run on the single track along the Des Moines River in Seattle.  This was a moss covered trail surrounded by ferns and trees, where even a stick on the ground had stuff growing on it.  Light rain and in the sunlight, one of those runs that makes everything right in the world.

4 hour hike up Siphon Draw to Flatiron Peak in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix.  Great evening with a friend, incredible country and good company.  6.3 miles

Finally got home at 10:30pm and it was snowing lightly so I headed to the gym for my run.  Continuous interval workout on the treadmill.  2 mile warm up, 5X1mile @ 12mph with .5 miles @ 8mph, 2 mile cool down.

I had two experiences last week that have been on my mind.  As I walked back to my car after the Carlsbad 5k an older lady was walking beside me and began asking me questions about the race.  She said that she was running the women's master race in an hour for the 5th time.  Then she pointed at the race medal on my neck and gasped, Oh you got a medal!  I kind of shrugged, you know, you get one of these in every race.  She explained that the race only gave out medals to the first 200 finishers and she had been trying to get one for five years.  I pulled it off my head and handed it to her.  How many of these do us runners have anyways?  She gave me a huge hug and started to cry.  I was so impressed by the spirit it takes to work so hard for something.

Then last week on an all day hike with a small group in Arizona after stopping several times with the laggging hiker of the group, after we had talked all day about business plans good and bad, how well his personal one had done, he said that he would give anything he had to get into shape enough to hike or run like I could.  We both laughed because it sounded so funny, but he said he was serious.  It's easy to make money, earn degrees, or be successful, but it's so hard to learn to do what you love.

I wonder how many of us runners forget how neat it is to have grabbed this out of life. 

Easy run this morning at 8 min pace with some lifting.  Heading out for sure today on the White Pine trail for some cross country skiing.  New fresh powder in April!  Ha Ha!

Proud of my son for deciding he wanted to sacrifice two years of his teenage life to serve a service mission for the LDS church.  He's saved up a lot of money for this.  We just opened his papers and he will be living in Nashville, Tennessee after spending two months learning Spanish at the Provo MTC.

Little late this morning and missed my warm up totally, but since it was 15 degrees I didn't really care.  It really was a beautiful day though.  It was fun saying Hi to everyone from the blog for the first spring race and then it was time to get to work.  I wanted a 5:40 pace today and not a stupid race like the ones I keep running, a good tempo run before Boston.  By 3/4 mile I was feeling the altitude.  I just do too much training at sea level right now.  I think the race is at about 6,400 feet and I was winded already.  James M. was loping along side me like it was a Sunday afternoon jog in the park.  I was kind of stiff and didn't want to spend 13 miles feeling like that so I picked up the pace to 5:20 and stayed there for the next three miles, trying to shake it out.  I began to catch up to the lead group of three, but about 6 miles into it I felt like they were probably going to hold that pace and ran my own race.  When the course leveled out I began to catch my breath and felt much better than the start.  I could then just focus on hitting the 5:40 and relaxing.  Somewhere in there 7 Rossy cruised by me and slowed enough to say Hi for a minute and he was gone.  Smooth race and the first half in a long time that was just fun.  This course has never been one I enjoyed.  Just a few seconds fast on pace in average, but it was due to shaking out some on those first miles.

Awesome talking to Albert, Ben, Riley and Rossy together after the finish.  These guys are in the groove.  Ben and Riley especially are hitting some really neat workouts.  There's some cool stuff coming from these two this year.  James and Allie are fun as usual, and James had some great ideas for running parts of Bostson that had me worried.  Thanks!

Now heading up to White Pine trail above Tony Grove for an afternoon of Cross Country skiing.  Word is 8" of fresh powder that's melting fast...