It's over, man. Let her go.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor...won't you be mine?

Running in the city where Mr. Rogers was filmed, I have to say, today was a great day compared to the many that have been in the recent past.  Although I ran on the TM (yuck!), it was a wonderful run...not because I bested by previous injured record on the TM's 5k program by 2 minutes (ha ha), but because I had a minuscule amount of pain in my achilles during or afterward!  I did walk about the 3.9k mark for a minute and took the final 4% incline hill slower to minimize the chances of doing any damage, but I'm very happy with the workout. 

It's 33 days until my Half I was hoping to be well enough to run, so that should be enough time to build up the mileage again to where I may be able to meet my previous (and only) PR on that course...at least that's the plan!

To celebrate my run, and to give a shout-out to Mr. Rogers (may he rest in peace), here's a couple of photos from when our family went to the TV station, WQED, to view the setup of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood in the original recording studio, the last time it would ever be displayed again before being retired forever.  The dinosaur sits outside WQED year-round.  During this last snow storm, I drove by the dino probably 10 times over the course of the week and it was generally cleared of snow - I watched 3 university students brush snow off it as they walked by on their way to campus.  They may be walking through a foot of snow on the uncleared sidewalk, but the dino was always cleared of snow.  A tribute to the wonderful man Mr. Rogers is and how even those growing up long after the taping of his show ended still know and love him.

Enough of my long-winded tribute.  Here are the pics.  Sorry for the poor quality - cell phone camera.  Pretty sad when you forget the real camera, but it's made even worse when you get to stand in line for 4 hrs listening to your wife tell you how it would have been nice to have a decent camera to take pictures.  Sigh...Oh well, It's good in the hood!

Really tough night last night for sleep and I'm pretty tired today.  I did get in a little sleep between dropping my daughter off at seminary and getting my son up for school.

Anyways, I warmed up with 15min walking on the TM, then jogged the 10k program on there.  Speed fluxuated between a 10:30 and 7:40 pace (mostly on the 10:30 - 10:00 pace).  Walked a couple of times for 45-60 seconds.  Felt pretty good, but was definitely not feeling much endurance today.  Slight achilles pain but nothing to really note.  Took it easy, but probably shouldn't have run as far as I did this early in my recovery.

I'll rest tomorrow and Friday I'll do some really easy, slow miles in prep for a longer 5-6mi Saturday run.

Crazy snow today and didn't go in to work/gym so I just rode my recumbent bike for 45 mins, enjoying watching Michael Jackson videos while I workout.

Edit:  Ok, so it's been snowing all day today (8+ inches).  I guess I'm glad I didn't sign up for the race tomorrow since I'd need snow shoes and I don't have any, let alone ran in them.  LOL

On a related note...I need to run tomorrow!  I have no idea how I'm going to run in this snow since they don't plow any more than just enough to get cars through, and I doubt I can get down to the gym at work unless the buses are running...  I need help!

Another snowy day so I waited until about Noon to head out.  The streets were clearer and it was 33^o so it had warmed up some.  The sidewalks were still pretty slippy so I stayed in the road as much as possible.  This was supposed to be a slow recovery run, and it pretty much was.  Did it in 1:02 without much effort or strain.  I felt like I was crawling at about 13:00 and doing the grandpa shuffle most of the time, so I'm quite surprised at the 10:00 pace and at the distance.  I thought it was only about 5.

I'm still waiting to hear from a couple of friends that ran the race today.  I'm bummed I wasn't able to run it, but it would have been too much.  Next year for sure!