Ugh! These last 2 weeks have been some of the most undisciplined weeks in the last 2 years. And it shows in my run today. Last week I was plain lazy, taking 3 straight days off. This week the cold kicked in and the back of my knee stiffened up and I thought it best to lay off the pavement until the weather broke. So today was 45 degrees and finally above 10-15. I had planned to do a 14.2 miler averaging m-race-pace. The run was a downhill fartlek of sorts. I hit all the downhills harder than race pace, and tried to maintain just above race pace on the recoveries. Most of the downills were about 100 yards, but there was a 2 or 3 slight downhills over 1/2 mile. At any rate, my first 3.1 miles was in 21:49 (7:02s) . The next 4 was in 27:40 (6:55s) . The next 4 in 27:32 (6:53s). At this point I realized I was 11 miles in and above race pace ... and totally shot. I decided it best to back off the end of the run by about a mile and use the last 2.3 [16:32 (7:10s)] as a cool down. I'm going to need to go back to a few weeks of focused base building again to catch back on what I've lost in the last few weeks. Total run was 13.4 in 1:33:33 (6:59s). | 