overtaking haynes

ran to my brother's soccer game in town. was planning on taking a connector trail there but it was not a trail it was white paint on trees. i turned around after 1/10 of a mile. 8 years ago it was a trail. the game was really boring and i wished i wasn't standing out in the sun but i did at least stretch a bit which i wouldn't have otherwise. legs felt decent after the first couple miles. 9 miles on the road and 5x600 tomorrow at 5k race pace with 90 sec rest...i'm going to pretend i've been following the pfitzinger advanced marathoning plan all along.  

purposely got to work by 7:30 so i could officially leave at 4:30 but didn't end up
leaving till 5:30. Would have liked to have done a few more miles but all is well. My big legs felt a little unsure of themselves despite their massive size but I was psyched for the workout since i know there aren't too many more of them. My gps watch did not work until the last mile of my run so was no help. I knew that I should be running the 6x600 around 2:05 and figured that i'd run about 2:10-2:15 so on my first one on the road i started at a mailbox and ended at a mailbox that put my time where it should be.  2:14 for the first one. did 90 sec rest. 2:11, 2:09, 2:11, 2:13, 2:16. May have missed the order of the 2nd and 3rd but those were the times. Right quad was tightening up during the cool down. It takes me about 3 vo2 max workouts to feel decent doing them. They actually start feeling good. I'm all about staying off the track now. I actually like having lots of cars pass me, it is kind of inspiring to not look pathetic. The only downside is i can't hear my music as well due to the noise. finished just as it was getting dark. did a decent stretch and managed to pump out an insane 25 pushups and situps.

Ran 1hr33 min, legs felt tight but running on the road is so much easier than the trails. Holding 7:30 when it's flat feels comfortable whereas 9 min on trails s pushing it. Holding a 6:52 for 26 miles to go under 3hrs seems kind of daunting. 6:40 is 2:55, which seems impossible. I'll have an idea how it will feel after the 1/2 this weekend. I'm kind of nervous I won't be able to run a 1:23. I would LOVE to just break 1:23, but it depends how fast this course is and if the weather is cool. Apparently only a net rise of 100ft the whole race, despite it being in a hilly area.  Should be beautiful, i hope the leaves are starting to change up there! Legs were definitely tight today. Tomorrow I may actually go to the track on the way home from work if there isn't a sporting event on it to do 100's. I'm just going to run 6-7 easy. And no turns around the track for sure. Blister/cut still not close to being healed although today the pain was only a 2 on a scale of 0 to 10. Ball of the foot pain is almost non-existent. Still going to stay off the trails until after the marathon i think and a week off. That's the plan anyway.

 I did measure my 600 workout from yesterday and found that the intervals were actually 630m +/- 5m.

 Saw a fox for the 2nd day in a row. They're everywhere i guess.

 

Went to the h.s. track and there was a cross country meet going on. Even the leaders didn't look very fast. I'm curious how fast they ran. I mostly ran around the soccer fields there and the cross country course before and after the meet. did 8x100 sprints on the soccer field. Not really striders, but full sprints about 95%. Felt pretty weak today probably from the long run and the intensity of my runs increasing. Will maybe take tomorrow off unless I want to wake up early and run 5 in the dark. 

This race was supposed to be very fast according to the website. I originally thought to my surprise that there was only a net 100ft of elevation gain total but it was instead a net 100ft loss which really doesn't mean anything on a rolling hilly course. The hills weren't substantial, there were no big climbs but the course never did seem flat. I was really hoping for a 1:23 since i thought i was in better shape than in '05 when i didn't even have racing flats. I did however come from training in CO to sea level with lots of long tempo runs and the extra oxygen probably helped me a lot. 

Haynes was there and i really didn't want to lose to him by more than a minute. His track workouts he has been posted have seemed very strong and i thought he might run a ridiculous time. Haynes already posted a good race report so i'll just say that i felt tight holding 6:15 pace for the first several miles. Not sure why my hamstrings were tight...after about mile 8 i started to not be too happy....i held on till mile 10, it was funny to pass the parking lot of a state park where i had a trail race earlier in the year...that was unexpected. Came through 10 miles in 1:03:55 with Haynes holding an even pace till then.  i needed to pull through in 20:04 for my goal time but only mustered a miserable 20:43 for the final 5k. The last mile had a miserable hill. It was odd how there was no pain anymore after mile 10, i simply was shut down. Haynes maintained his pace very well and beat me by about a minute.

 The one depressing thing was that i found a 40yr old woman ran about 5 sec faster than me last year and went on 2 weeks later only to run a 3:02 marathon. i'm hoping the marathon course i'm doing is faster. I also hope that my body is more suited for maintaining paces not close to my threshold pace of 6:10. I'm wondering whether it's best to go out in 6:45 and try to hold on or closer to 6:50....