Old Man Still running

I ran in Mary Ann's April Fools 10K on the Provo River Trail.  Well....kind of, not really.   Dumb, me, I didn't double check the website and didn't know the start time had been moved up two hours.   So, when I arrived at 10:30 a.m., Mary Ann was cleaning up.  She felt bad, but had no reason to.  She encouraged me to go ahead and do the run since the course was still marked and she would put me in the results.  Why not, I agreed.   It would be interesting to see if I could push myself hard enough alone.  Since I had already run 11 miles this morning, I didn't have high expectations.   I thought I would run well over 45 minutes.  I didn't push the first mile too hard because I didn't want to burn my lungs, but it probably was about a 6:45 pace.  The second mile was 6:55.  I was feeling good and wasn't pushing it too hard, dodging some walkers and joggers along the way.  I reached the turn-around at 21:31:02, which I knew was almost a minute faster than last month on the course, on a 43:02 pace.   "OK", I thought, "let's push it harder and see what I can do today."   The return is a gradual uphill all the way.   My legs felt surprizingly great, to I pushed ahead.  I had a mile split of 7:06 and then a lazy mile split of 7:22.  After that I kicked it into gear and finished strong with a 43:47.   I was pleased.  If I would have had competitors to push me, I'm sure I would have done much better, but I still was almost a minute faster than last month on this course.   So, I got everything I hoped for, a nice tempo run in great running temperatures and a much better time than expected.

Here is what I did earlier in the morning.  

With a storm coming in today, I decided to go punish myself on the treadmill for a little while.  I did 7 miles mostly at 10% incline or higher.   I did tough spurts up at 25% incline.  Ouch.  Felt good afterwards.   When I went outside to my car, the dawn was approaching and it felt warm at 45 degrees, so I decided to put in 4 more miles along Utah Lake.   The geese and birds were really making a racket in the rushes along the lake.   I noticed a big flock of geese overhead in formation heading northwest.  All of a sudden, something spooked them.  They fell out of formation and were flying in all directions making distressful honks.   They kept doing this for a couple minutes but then finally calmed down and resumed their journey.  Pretty cool.   The cold air was a bit nippy on my bare arms, so I pushed the pace pretty hard to stay warm.    It has been a good week of running, 83 miles in five days this week.