I am one with the levee and the levee with me

AM - Easy 8 by the Columbia.

PM - Added 6 with the guys from Kamiakin.

AM - Easy 4

PM - 6 miles at 5:40 pace. I've gotta start doing these my way instead of catering to the guys I'm running with. We only did 1 mile warmup since our basketball team is playing in the regional playoffs. It just doesn't work for me. It took me a full mile at 5:40 pace to really feel comfortable.

Feeling a little tired, I don't think the 3 workouts a week thing is working very well. Maybe if running were all I did and I could sit around and eat ice cream the rest of the day it would be perfect (wouldn't that be sweet? I bought some Haagen Dazs chocolate peanut butter ice cream last night... pure heaven. I woke up at 3am and with a craving and nothing to stop me....), but work has been a little bit physical and I'm struggling to feel relaxed in my workouts. I was planning an 8-10 miler at 6:00 pace Thursday, but I think I'll push it to next week and stick with just a Saturday workout. We'll see how that works out.

Also I'm starting to get a little Plantar's fascitis in my right foot. I've always been able to stretch it out, but somehow my stretches aren't reaching it. It's like my toes have locked up and they won't let me push hard enough to get a good stretch. It's been slowly creeping up on me and didn't go away with the new shoes... I'm starting to get worried.

Meant to run more tonight but I was just so tired. 6 easy miles with Austin and Anthony.

AM - 8 easy miles on the Columbia. Met some guy on the trail who was running about my pace, which threw me cause he had grey hair and the level of competition among grey-haired men in this area is relatively low. Anyway, turns out he's from the Bay Area and is a structural engineer in town to tear down a building.

Which made me think, how'd I miss the boat on this job? This is every kid's dream, to travel around the US blowing things up. As a kid you pretty much know policeman and firefighter are the only two options, maybe doctor and scientist as you get a little older. They really need to introduce this as an option earlier in life. I'm pretty sure I'd be qualified on childhood experience alone.

Anyway, on the way back I stopped by one of the restrooms (they stay open all winter... and they're heated... talk about a hobo paradise, eh?) and it was like a scene out of horror film. There were spiders everywhere, covering every inch of everything... I've never seen anything like it. They were on the toilet seat, in the corners, inside the bowl, hanging from the ceiling, doing trapeze acts from corner to corner... Black widows, large fuzzy brown ones... everything you can think of. Talk about a tense atmosphere. But I'm happy to report the purpose of the stop was a success. That's one situation I now know my bowels can handle.

PM - Easy 7. Met with Anthony and Austin. They were supposed to do 12x400m intervals earlier but instead ran 4 or 5 at 5:40. I'm going to stop showing up on days they're supposed to do track workouts, tempo runs at 5:40 are only going to get them so far. I never thought I'd be this kind of a bad influence.

AM - Easy 6 out on the river.

PM - Ran 8 with Austin and Alan.

Had a great day of training today. The workout was 3x3200m, trying to hit as close to 10:00 as I could. Austin and Anthony came as well, their workout was to do the first mile of each of my reps, which is a lot of rest, but they haven't spent much time at sub-5 pace, so I figured it would be okay.

I was planning on 3 min rests, but after the first one (10:13, 5:05-5:08), I needed a quick pit stop, and also switched from my racing flats to spikes. The rest ended up being 4:30.

Second rep was 10:07 (5:01-5:06). The pace was much easier to maintain with the other guys in front of me. First half felt great, but I was laboring to run faster than 76s on my own. Took 4 minutes rest.

The guys offered to alternate laps on the last rep to pace me to 10:00 and it made all the difference. I don't think I'd have maintained pace on my own. 4:59-4:59 for 9:58.

The best thing about the workout is I had several gears left. It was difficult and painful, but not an all-out kind of painful which has me excited to get into some longer distance races.

Afterwards we went cliff jumping out on the Snake river. It was about 60 degrees, sunny, about a 35-foot drop, and water temps just above freezing. And it was absolutely wonderful.