Same Time, Same Channel

40 minutes on the elliptical.

My training plan was beckoning, "Come run hill repeats. Come on, it'll be fun." But my knee is still bothering me just a bit and so I ignored the training plan and drove to work and used the elliptical. Also, I didn't get the laundry done and didn't have clean outdoor running clothes. I have to say, I hate the elliptical more than I hate the treadmill. I could not wait for that workout to finish.

I think I may try to run tomorrow, but not the 10-mile progression run that's on my schedule. I'm going to tentatively move that to Thursday and do today's planned workout tomorrow. It's supposed to be 2 miles easy, then 6 x 1 minute hill repetitions, and then 2 more miles easy. I think I'll use the 2 miles to run to a certain hill that I'm thinking of, do the repeats, and then run home. That really doesn't sound too difficult to me.

In other news, my husband and things 1 and 3 are all home from work/school today because they are all sick. I'm glad to be at work and away from them. So far I'm feeling okay in that department.

2 miles easy, 6 x 1 min hill repeats, 2 miles easy. Average pace: 10:10/mile.

Weather at 6:30 am: 27°, 66% humidity, no significant wind.

My pace on the 2 miles and change before the hill repeats was 10:36. My pace on the 2 miles and change after the hill repeats was 10:00. Pace on the hill repeats was 8:06, 8:21, 8:23, 8:18, 8:11, 8:20.

A 1-minute hill repeat is a lot harder than an 8-second hill sprint. But 1 minute sounds a lot easier than 2 minutes. I've got this same work out in two weeks, but the hill repeats are 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. I used to different hill this morning than I use for my hill sprints. This is a longer hill, but about the same grade (6-10%). I think the hill that I used today is long enough for the 2-minute hill repeats in two weeks. I was only running about half way up it today.

My leg felt fine except that I had a little tightness in the calf on the easy part after the hill repeats. I did some extra stretching after the run and it feels okay now.

Easy run + 10 x 8 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 10:00.

Weather at 6:30 am: 35°F, 35% humidity, wind avg. 5mph, max 10 mph, ESE.

The wind was more of factor today than yesterday. And the route that I took today is mostly uphill when going south and mostly downhill when going north. The wind was coming from the south, so uphill was into the wind, and on the downhill I had the wind behind me. As a result, there is quite a difference between my pace for the going south part (around 10:30) and my pace for the going north part (around 9:30). So I'm wondering about the principle of taking easy runs easy. If sometimes on an easy run 10:30 feels easy and sometimes, even on the same run, 9:30 feels easy, is it okay to include both paces in an easy run?

I got to the hill for the hill sprints at what was apparently the prime time for walking to the middle school (about 7:35). As I've mentioned before, the hill where I run hill sprints is on the path through the green belt between my neighborhood and the middle school. Since I did 10 hill sprints, I spent quite a while on the hill, and I saw lots of kids. I don't know these kids and I don't care if I look like a dork to them. In any case, my paces for the hill sprints were 7:50, 8:01, 8:00, 7:27, 7:57, 8:02,7:46, 8:12, 7:49, 8:20. That's perhaps a little faster than I should take the hill sprints, but it's so hard to figure out and adjust my pace within 8 seconds.

My goal on days I drive the boy to seminary is to get up early enough that I can get dressed for running before I drive him, so that I can head out on the run as soon as I get home. I didn't manage to do that today. I got up in time to put on my shoes, coat, and glasses, and drive him in my pajamas. So now I'm running late for the rest of the morning. I better stop writing stuff on this blog and get busy!

Oh, one more thing. I have a half hour core/abs class at work today at noon.

Objective: Progression Run - 10 miles, last 6 moderate.

Result: Progression Run - 10.53 miles, last 6.53 moderate (bordering on hard). Average pace: 9:39.

Weather at 6 am: 35°F, 23% humidity, wind 6 mph SSE.

I started out slowly and kept it pretty slow for the first four miles, but then I sped up fairly significantly once I hit the speed-up point. Splits were: 10:59, 10:39, 10:56, 10:31, 9:32, 9:12, 8:44, 8:51, 8:54, 8:51.

I ended up going a little farther than I had intended. I took my standard 10-mile route that I've done a lot lately, but I don't like the last part of it, so I changed it up and went home a different way. I was afraid the different way wouldn't be long enough, so I added in a loop. It turns out the loop was a little too big. I wanted to end close to but not under 10 miles. Oh well.

I'm trying to figure out how to approach my Saturday run this week. The description of it is "Hard Long Run - 1 mile easy, 10 miles @ marathon pace + 10-20 sec./mile, 1 mile easy." The thing is that my marathon pace, according to McMillan and my most recent race, which was a 5K on Thanksgiving Day, my marathon pace is 9:58. If I had 10-20 seconds to that, then I'm at easy run pace. I've been running a lot faster than that on the moderate part of my progression runs (see today's splits). However, on Saturday I've got to go 10 miles at whatever pace I decide, with only one mile of warmup before. My progression runs have been no longer than 6 miles with at least 2 miles of warmup before. So I'm not sure what pace to target for this run on Saturday. I'm thinking maybe around 9:30-9:40. It is supposed to be a hard long run. I guess I'll just have to see how I feel.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:29.

Weather at 6:30 am: 42°F, 24% humidity, winds 5-12 mph ESE.

Just an easy run today. The wind was a factor some of the time. I've got a little delayed-onset muscle soreness in both quads from the core class I went to on Wednesday. He had us sit on the floor in kind of a v shape, leaning back part way with legs off the ground, and pull our knees in towards our chests then out again repeatedly. It really killed in quads for some reason.

My 12-year-old son is in the school spelling bee this afternoon. This is his third year in the spelling bee. Last year he took second place. He got out because he garbled what he said even though he knew the spelling of the word (the word was 'angstrom'). I hope he doesn't make a mistake like that this year. He is favored to win this year. These things make me really nervous. I sat through it sweating buckets last year. I should try not to get so worked up about it. We've studied this year, but not quite as much as I would have liked, but I think he's in pretty good shape. But he was grumpy this morning. I hope he calms down by this afternoon.

**UPDATE - Spelling Bee Report**

Argh!! They were doing a round with 6-7 kids in it and Sam got teriyaki. He said t-e-r, started to say a and changed it to i, then y-a-k-i. He clearly knew the right spelling, but they got him out for his stumble. The strange thing was that everyone else in that round also got out, except for one kid, who I think was a 4th grader. So they declared that kid the winner, but they needed a runner-up. So they continued the spelling bee without the winning kid and went on with all of the people who had gotten out in the round. It took several more rounds, with the words getting progressively harder, but Sam went on to win as the runner-up. If that strange fluke round hadn't happened, I'm pretty sure that other kid would have gotten out along the way and Sam would have won. He was runner-up last year too because he garbled a word that he knew how to spell. Argh!! I can't believe it.

Now here's the best story from the spelling bee. A girl had the word "character." She started out saying c-a, and my daughter, who is in first grade, was sitting beside me and said to me, "That's not right. It's c-h." Maybe she's my future spelling champion.

Long (sorta) run - 1 mile easy, 10 miles at marathon pace (maybe - could be wishful thinking), 1 mile easy. Average pace: 9:33/mile.

Weather from 9-11 am: 46°F, 30% humidity, wind 5-10 mph SW.

I went on the Highline Canal trail again because I didn't feel like running hills. There are a few small hills on the trail, but nothing like the hills on the streets where I normally run. It was really unseasonably warm and I didn't notice the wind at all until the last mile. If I can maintain this pace in my marathon, I will be thrilled. I think I can run a faster pace than this in my half marathon in March. My run today was only a mile short of a half marathon, and it wasn't really that hard. I had to look at my watch a lot to try to maintain a steady pace. I tried to keep it around 9:30 for the specific pace miles, but got a little anxious and sped up just a bit the last couple of miles. In any case, my splits were 10:19, 9:25, 9:34, 9:33, 9:28, 9:31, 9:24, 9:24, 9:27, 9:13, 9:12, 10:04.

Thus ends my cut back week. I plan to be back up over 50 miles next week.

Speed Intervals: 3 miles easy, 14 x 1 min @ 5K pace/1 min. easy, 3 miles easy.

Weather at 6:00 am: 34°F, 68% humidity, wind avg. 6 mph, gusting to 12 mph, S.

I was supposed to do 15 intervals instead of 14 but I got messed up on the counting. I tried to use the workout feature on my Garmin, which I have never used before. I programmed the workout into the Garmin correctly, but then I wasn't sure whether the Garmin automatically recorded a lap each time it started a new step in the workout, so I was hitting the lap button manually at the beginning and end of each interval. As it turns out, the Garmin was doing it automatically too, and so I got through the intervals twice as fast as I was supposed to. I finally realized this when the Garmin said the workout was done and I knew I was nowhere near done. I wasn't sure how many intervals I had done though, because I had stopped hitting the lap button manually at some point. So I just guessed and did 5 more intervals, timing them manually. It turns out I had done 9 before (though the 9th was almost 2 minutes because the Garmin quit the workout before I realized it), so I had a total of 14 intervals. I was supposed to do 15. Oh well. So now I know how the workouts feature works and I'll use it again next time I have a relatively complicated workout that I need help keeping track of.

Incidentally, my pace on the intervals was: 8:21, 8:12, 7:50, 8:17, 8:24, 8:08, 8:30, 8:39, 8:48, 7:40, 7:41, 8:28, 7:50, 7:41. According to McMillan, may 5K pace is 8:47, so I was a little under that most of the time. The last 5 I didn't look at the pace on the watch at all. I just ran by feel and with one exception was about a minute faster/mile than I was supposed to be.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:10.

Weather at 6 am: 30°F, 47% humidity, just a little wind part of the time, full moon in the west followed by sunrise in the east.

I ran my normal 10 mile route that I've done a lot recently, but in reverse. I never realized how many downhills there are when I go my standard direction. I saw more runners than usual out this morning.

I almost got hit by a car. The problem always comes when I'm running along the left side of a street and someone is turning right from a side street onto the street I'm running on. They look left the whole time and never look to the right until after they've started moving. That's what happened this morning. The car was stopped and there was some traffic coming from the car's left, so I started going, but then the car started pulling forward, and so I stopped. The driver then looked to the right and saw me and stopped. She mouthed "sorry" and then I continued on. She was probably more shaken up by it than I was. I've had this situation several times as a runner. I'm going to have to pay attention to whether I look to the right when I'm in that situation as a driver.

Easy run 8.5 miles + 10 x 8 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 10:20.

Weather at 5:30 am: 20°F, 83% humidity, wind 10 mph S. We got maybe a half inch of snow last night and it stuck to the grass, but only to some sidewalks. The sidewalks and road shoulders that I ran on were sometimes clear, mostly had a thin layer of crunchy snow, and in a handful of spots, were icy and slick. I slipped probably 5 times, but was always able to keep my balance and didn't fall.

I went a little slower on the hill sprints than I have other times. Maybe I was more tired, or maybe it was because of the little bit of snow/ice on the hill. In any case, my paces on the hill sprints were: 8:29, 8;12, 8:42, 8:26, 8:54, 8:03, 8:24, 9:12, 9:14, 8:25.

By new boss is supposed to arrive in Denver today. She lives in Singapore, but has been in California for the last couple of days. I've never met her before - only talked on the phone within the last couple of weeks. She's a runner, so we'll have to see if we can work out a time to run together while she's here.

Threshhold run - 2 miles easy (11:02/mile), 15 minutes @ half-marathon pace (9:21/mile), 2 minutes easy (10:54/mile), 15 minutes @ half-marathon pace (9:14/mile), 3 miles easy (10:06/mile)

Weather at 5:30 am: 22°F, 58% humidity, wind 7 mph S.

I had a busy morning but managed to get the run in. I don't have much to say about this run except that it is hard for my to run at a targeted pace when it's dark because I have to check my watch so often to make sure I'm on pace, and while I wear a head lamp (it probably needs new batteries) and I can turn the light on the watch, it's just harder to see the watch.

I met my boss last night. She seems very nice. But she does think I'm a little crazy to run 6 days/week. I've got a 5 mile easy run planned for tomorrow, so we're going to see if we can find a time to run together tomorrow. She leaves tomorrow night.

Easy run with my boss. Average pace was not too bad while we were running, but I don't have a good figure for the average pace because we walked a fair chunk at the end. We had just a little bit of snow last night, so it was cold and slick. She had never seen snow in her life before yesterday. With the cold and snow and the elevation and hills, she was kind of thrown for a loop. Also, I'm actively training for a marathon right now and she's not. We had intended to go 5 miles, but we cut the run short. I hope I didn't make her feel bad.

Progression run - 16+ miles with last 30 minutes hard and uphill.

Weather: 26°F, 72% humidity, hardly any wind.

This was a very difficult run in many ways. I left the house after some discord at home. I got started and my legs felt heavy and I was worrying about having to do 30 minutes hard at the end of the run. And then a mile into my run I did something that I've never done on a run that I can recall. I fell down. I tripped over an uneven spot in the sidewalk and fell forward. I caught myself with my hands and since I had gloves on, I got my gloves dirty and didn't scrape up my hands. And I didn't even fall hard enough to tear a hole in my gloves. But I must have banged my left knee just a little bit. I think I have a small bruise. I wasn't really hurt, but I kind of wanted to cry and just turn around and go home. But I didn't cry. And I didn't go home. I got up and dusted myself off and kept going.

I ran the first 13 miles at an average pace of 10:06. In truth, some of it was considerably slower than that and some was considerably faster. This route has a really significant downhill stretch for about 4.5 miles starting at mile 7, so my pace was around 9:00 through that section, though I was trying to keep it easy because I knew that what goes down must come up when you're running a loop. I started the real uphill after mile 12 and then started running harder a mile later. My pace on the last 30 minutes (3.36 miles) was 8:55. It was definitely hard. I really had to dig deep to finish this run. And the second that my watch said it had been 30 minutes for the last part, I stopped and walked the rest of the way home. It was only a few house lengths anyway.

I'm glad this run is over. Now I've got to drive up to Fort Collins to attend the all-state orchestra concert that my son is playing in. He's first chair in the bass section. Less that sound too impressive, there are two all-state orchestras, and he is in the lower one. Still, we're proud of him for winning section leader. He didnt' feel like his audition went very well, but apparently it was better than the others.

Hill Repetations - 2 miles easy, 6 x 2 min. uphill @ 10K effort w/jog-back recoveries, 2 miles easy.

Weather starting at about 7:30 am: low 34°F, high 46°F, 20% humidity, wind 12 S.

I thought on Saturday that I didn't make any holes in my gloves when I fell, but I was wrong. I washed the gloves after Saturday's run and this morning discovered one hole in the palm and one hole in the thumb of the left glove. It's too bad because they are my SmartWool glove liners. Maybe I'll try to sew the holes closed. That's what I did with my SmartWool socks when my toe made a hole.

I really felt sluggish when I started out this morning, probably because of my hard run last Saturday. My legs were leaden for the first two miles and then at the end of those two miles I went down the hill that I use for the hill repetitions and at that point I started feeling better. Still running uphill at a decent pace for 2 minutes was really hard. I made it up to the top of the hill in that time, so if I ever want to do longer hill repeats, I'll have to find another hill (no problem there). However, there are no more hill repeats on my current training schedule. In any case, my pace on the hill repeats was 8:56, 9:05, 8:54, 9:10, 8:59, 8:47. According to McMillan, my 10K pace is 8:56, so I was pretty close. I'm sure I went faster on the first minute of the hill repeat than on the second, but that's how it averaged out. I felt a lot better running the two miles home than I did running the two miles to the hill.

Tomorrow schedule says 10 miles, with the last 8 miles hard. That sounds scary to me. If my legs feel anything like they did today, I may delay the start of the hard portion or do away with it all together and run 10 miles easy. We'll see.

I didn't have to go to work today, so it was nice to be able to sleep in and run a little later, but that accounted for the relatively significant change in temperature over the course of my run.

Progression run - 10 miles, last 8 miles hard. Average pace: 9:11.

Weather: 40°F, 26% humidity, wind 20 mph SW, clear skies with a waning crescent moon. I guess it was fairly windy, but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to the wind.

Yesterday I was questioning my ability to complete this run and was thinking about modifying it to make it easier. But then I remembered that I had to be back from my run in time to drive my oldest son and a string bass to school before 7:00. I usually get home from my runs around 7:30 or even 8:00. My first approach to this issue was to try to be like Snoqualmie and get up absurdly early. I got up earlier than usual, but not quite early enough. I was out the door by 5:15, but needed to have been out by 5:00. So the only recourse left to me then was to either cut the run short or run fast. I tried to run fast. I was home from the run by 6:50 and when I got here the boy wasn't even ready to go. Here are my splits: 10:30, 10:11, 9:40, 9:11, 9:38 (now it changes from generally uphill to generally downhill), 8:48, 8:20, 8:26, 8:39, 8:28.

I wish I could just hang out at home and take it easy and take a nap after I've done hard workouts like this, but alas, I have to go to work and sit at a desk all day. I'll probably have dead legs the next couple of days because I really pushed it today.

Easy run + 10 x 8 sec. hill sprints. Average pace: 10:43.

Weather: 35°F, 34% humidity, wind 6 NW, partly cloudy with a waning crescent moon.

I drove thing 2 to seminar at 6:00 this morning before my run and while I was driving him I had an intense desire to go back home and go back to bed. But I went back home and ran instead. My legs actually felt better than I thought they would, but I had a general tiredness and so I made sure to stay at an easy pace. None of my mile splits was under 10:00. My pace on the hill sprints ranged from 8:10 to 9:12, with seven out of the ten under 9:00 pace. Since I was a little late on my run I didn't encounter any middle schoolers on my hill. I saw the last of the middle schoolers walking down the hill as I approached it before starting the hill sprints.

I was thinking about treadmill running vs. running outside yesterday. I realized that when I run outside I really have no sense of the passage of time. I wear a watch and so I know what time it is and I know roughly how long the run will take me, but most of the time I'm focusing on distance and don't notice, for example, when I've been out for an hour. When I run on a treadmill, it's all about time, trying to keep going for 30 more minutes or something like that. I find it much more pleasant to focus on distance rather than time.

Objective: Threshold Run - 2 miles easy, 5 miles @ half-marathon pace, 2 miles easy. Average pace: 9:47.

Weather: 22°F, 52% humidity, wind 4.6 SSW.

I've been running slight variations of the same route a lot lately. I could have done that again today. Instead, I ran a route that I haven't run in a while. It basically goes from my home to my office and then back home. It's generally downhill from home to my office and uphill coming back. I tried to keep myself from going too fast on the downhill, but then I pushed it a little more on the uphill because I was closer to being done and I was feeling pretty good. I would have called it a moderate effort, not a hard effort. Based on my last 5K, McMillan says my half-marathon pace is 9:27, but I think it's a little faster than that. In any case, my splits were: 11:13, 10:48, 9:32, 9:15, 9:17, 9:12, 8:49, 10:02, 9:52.

I'm working at home today so that I can get laundry done. I go through running clothes really quickly with running 6 days/week and wearing two shirts on every run.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:36/mile.

Weather: 28°F, 22% humidity, wind 10 mph S.

I drove thing 2 to seminary, then came back home and went in the house for a few minutes, and then stepped outside to run. It had been dark when I drove him to seminary at 6:00, but I was surprised how light it was when I stepped out of the house at 6:15. I've been getting out in the morning every weekday, but when I get out earlier while it's still dark, I guess I don't really notice at what point it gets light. The sun wasn't up at 6:15 this morning, but it was starting to get light. We get earlier sunrises (and earlier sunsets) here in Denver, than in some places such as Salt Lake City. We're on the eastern edge of the time zone, while they're on the western edge of the same time zone. We have flat plains to the east while they have mountains to the east. These two things combine to make quite a difference in the time of sunrise.

I ran my trusty old 4 mile loop that I used to run all the time when 4 miles was a common distance for me. It was definitely easier today than it used to be.

I've got a crazy workout tomorrow during which I have to alternate between 1 minute at 10K pace and 1 minute easy over the course of 5 miles. I suppose if I don't alternate precisely every minute, it's not a big deal.

I've got a really easy week next week. This Hudson plan seems to be throwing in an easy week every 3rd week at this point.

Fartlek + Progression. Average pace: 9:43.

Weather: 27°F, 63% humidity, wind 7.5 SE.

I ran on the Highline Canal Trail. It was covered with a thin layer of fresh snow when I started, but most of the snow was gone by the time I finished. When I got up this morning I didn't really want to go out and run because it looked so snowy and cold, but it turned out to be a beautiful day with clear blue skies and sun.

I ran the first 6 miles at an easy pace (10:24 avg), then for the next 5 miles I did 24 repeats of 1 minute at 10K pace (I shot for about 8:30, but might have been a little faster some of the time) and 1 minute easy. Then I did 1 mile easy (10:44), and finished with 2 miles hard (8:37 avg). I really pushed hard at the end.

To keep track of the 5 mile fartlek portion, I set up a workout out my Garmin that had the first 6 miles as one lap, the next 5 miles as one lap, the next mile as one lap, and the last 2 miles as one lap. During the second lap, I put my watch on a display that showed current pace (so I could try to get the right pace on the fast portions), lap distance (so I would know how far into the 5 miles I was), and lap time. Each time the seconds on the lap time got to 00, I would switch pace. If the minutes on the lap time was an even number, I ran fast, and if the minutes on the lap time was an odd number, I ran easy. I didn't track individual laps for each minute in the fartlek portion because that would just be way too many laps. This system won't quite work when I have a similar workout again in a few weeks because that time the fartlek/easy intervals are supposed to be 90 seconds.

I've got a really easy week next week. I'm feeling fairly strong and not particularly like I need a rest, but maybe I should take advantage of the easy week so that I'll be ready for the hard weeks that follow it.

No run today.

I felt fine on my run on Saturday and even afterwards for most of the day. In fact, as you may recall, I was complaining about having an easy week this week. What fools we mortals be.

On Saturday evening I developed a pain in the outside of my right leg a few inches above my ankle. It hurts when I put weight on it, not terrible pain, but enough to make me limp. It's only gotten worse since then. I'm worried about it.

No run again today. However, my leg feels somewhat improved. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to run in another day or two.

It's a shame that I can't run today. We are having unseasonably warm temperatures, and I can see a beautiful sunrise out my bedroom window right now.

Easy run. Average pace: 10:25.

Hooray! I was able to get out and run today. My leg felt fine in terms of the pain I've been having the last few days. However, I felt generally sluggish. It's interesting to me that I would feel sluggish, rather than fresh, after 3 days of rest. I suspect I'll feel better tomorrow because of having done an easy run today.

I'm glad that I've got an easy week in my training schedule this week. It makes it easy for me to cut back even more and really take it easy. I don't feel like I'm missing any key workouts.

I just watched a small thing that did my heart good. My two youngest (a 6th grade boy and a 1st grade girl) go to the same elementary school and ride the bus together. I sent the girl out the door first this morning because the boy was still getting his stuff together. After the boy went out the door, I went upstairs and watched them through a window (I can see the bus stop from there). My daughter was standing a ways away from the other kids at the bus stop, who are mostly 3rd-4th grade boys who stand there and throw rocks at a fence. She's probably smart to stay away from them. My son hadn't reached the bus stop yet. But when he did, he went and stood by his little sister until the bus came. I was just happy to see what appeared to be my big boy looking out for his little sister.

Easy run, sometimes bordering on moderate. Average pace: 9:54.

Weather at 5:30 am: 42°, 47% humidity, wind 5-10 mph SSE.

It was hard to get out of bed while it was still dark, but once I got outside I was happy to be out in the crisp pre-dawn air. My legs felt a lot fresher today than yesterday. That makes me wonder about taking a day off before my marathon, which is what my training plan says to do. Maybe it would be better to take the day or maybe two before that off, then just do a short, easy run the day before the race. Thoughts, anyone?

Easy +  (bordering on moderate) run. Average pace: 9:42.

Weather at 6:15 am: 22°F, 82% humidity, minimal wind.

I did a lot of cadence counting and thinking about cadence on my run this morning. During the first two miles, which I consider my warmup, my cadence was about 170-172. Later, when I was warmed up, it was around 176. My pace was faster with the 176 cadence, but wasn't really an increased level of effort since I was warmed up. However, I found that I hard a hard time increasing my cadence without increasing my pace. This lead me to some conclusions.

Pace is a product of cadence and stride length. If you're running at a given pace and you want to maintain that pace while increasing your cadence, you have to have a corresponding decrease in stride length. Theoretically, you could do this for any pace. However, I came to the conclusion that we each have a sort of minimal reasonable stride length. For certain slower paces, you would have to decrease your stride length beyond your minimal reasonable stride length in order to increase your cadence to 180. I think the minimal reasonable stride length can vary from person to person. So I guess my conclusion is that on an easy run, depending on your easy pace, it might not be reasonable to have a cadence of 180 because that would require your stide length to be shorter than you can comfortably maintain.

On a different (but possibly related) topic, my easy pace was faster yesterday and today than it has been recently. I guess that's what 3 consecutive rest days will do for you.

Bonnie said yesterday that she thought I can run my upcoming half marathon in 1:50. I appreciate the compliment, and it gives me something to shoot for. But that would be an average pace of 8:24. I wonder if I could do it. I've got to figure out a pacing strategy for the half marathon.

Time trial. 2 miles, easy 6.2 miles at 10K pace. Average pace: 8:36.

Splits: 9:53, 9:54, 8:21, 8:26, 8:22, 7:55, 8:14, 7:48

Weather at 7 am: 16°F, 53% humidity, minimal wind.

It turns out I was supposed to do two more miles slow after the 10K portion, but that detail got lost in the transfer of the training plan from the book to my spreadsheet. Oh well. Maybe I'll get out this evening and do 2 miles easy.

I was trying to hit between 8:00 and 8:30 for the 10K portion. My overall time for the 10K portion was 50:46.

I felt sluggish when I ran on Wednesday, but I felt really strong on Thursday, Friday, and today. When I felt good on Thursday and Friday, I figured that it was just because of the three days of rest I had at the first of the week, and I'm sure that is part of it. But I was surprised to still feel good today after having run easy, but faster than usual, the last couple of days. So I started looking for other explanations for my feeling good. On Tuesday afternoon I had a conversation with a friend and we decided that I would start keeping a food journal and would email her the previous day's entries each day to keep me accountable (I want to lose about 10 pounds). So I have been eating really well since Tuesday evening and haven't had any sugary stuff except for one cup of chocolate milk each morning and one square of Dove dark chocolate one day. I think it's probably a combination of the rest and eating right that is making me feel so good. I'm not going to rest three days every week to duplicate this feeling, but it motivates me to keep eating right. I'll do that and we'll see if I keep feeling good.