Bret

AM - 4.25 miles with Dan and Finn early before church.  Lots of aches and pains - Might be the Covid or Flu vaccine that I got yesterday or the Zetia I tried to resume yesterday - either way I am gonna take a zetia / statin holiday for a week or so leading up to Chicago.  

AM - in NYC for business - got in yesterday evening.  Began the run very easy - had a couple of bumpy steps with the outside of the left foot - but just ran easy and smoothly - and had a decent run today - most achiness was gone by the end and I felt pleased with the low HR and decent pace. 

AM - 6.75 miles from my hotel up Lexington to around 79th and over to the Park at the Met and around the reservoir back down on the west side.  Ran very well today - felt very little achiness and my pace the last few miles was sub 8 but at an HR effort that was only in the 140's.  I think 2 things contributed to this:  Statin holiday (day 2) and the temps were fall-like and dry in the lower 50s.   Plus I got over 8 hours of sleep.  

AM - 4 miles from the hotel into Central Park again - pace has been easy but much faster than usual.  

AM - 3.25 miles very early before a flight back to ATL.  Very quick pace again. Really liking this.  

AM - 3.75 miles more or less with Dan and Finn on the Milton Trail.   Wanted to keep it easy and short with Chicago on Sunday.   My plan is to run with whatever Richie feels like doing.  Lately, he's been in the mindset and fitness effort of running at 9 min pace for for the last few marathons as he works his way back to full fitness.  I think he is hesitant to push the limit given the TIA he had in Boston a couple of years ago now.   Looking at his Strava logs - he's done a decent amount of training, but not too many fast miles and the last couple of weeks with two hurricanes impacting his home - he's had more important things than running to deal with.  So I suspect that's the pace we will be running on Sunday.

I actually feel as though I could run much faster than that - assuming race conditions are good and I feel strong.  But at this point in my running / marathon racing - it is more about the social experience.  We don't run these races together to separate from each other as soon as the gun goes off...mostly we run together for as long as we can.  Sometimes one or both of us (or group of us) is nursing an injury or illness - and so we run at the pace that works for everyone.  Sometimes that means we don't necessarily finish together if things start to fall apart in the later miles but that's ok too.  

AM - 2 mile shake-out in Chicago ahead of the marathon tomorrow.  Richie had to bail as his home in St. Pete is still without power and was not expected to have power until Tuesday.  He has a small generator but did not feel right about leaving his family for the race - and that's completely understandible.  So, I will run "solo" tomorrow.