faster with age

     Ran 12 miles at 7:54 pace. The snow was too soft to run the snowmobile track up around Winder Reservoir so I took a dry gravel road [that gets plowed all winter] toward Treasureton Res. There  is still a foot of snow on the Winder road but with these warm temps the snow should melt quickly. Hopefully in another three weeks that road will be dry enough to run on. I had a south wind come up on my way back and had to run the last 4 miles into a stiff breeze. I was starting to feel pretty tired and it felt good to be done.

     8 miles easy pace. Felt a little worn out toward the end. 8:49 AP.

     I went for 15 miles on my mt bike this morning. It's the first time this spring that the snow was gone and the road was dry. There was a strong wind blowing and the temp was in the 20s so it was a bit chilly. Most of the first part of the ride was into a headwind and it was hard to maintain 10 MPH. Nice to get that out of the way on the way out and was able to just fly coming back.

     8 mile run. just kept it easy and didn't pay attention to pace. I'm not planning for any races right away so just keeping the pace easy most days and gradually building up mileage. 8:32 AP.

     6 more slow miles at 8:37AP.

     I hadn't decided whether I was doing this race for sure until about 8:30 this morning. I'm not in any kind of race shape. I've just been running mostly low mileage slowly the past couple of months. Since it was only 20 min from home [which is about as close as races get for me] and it was only $5 dollars [$4 if you wore green] and my wife needed to pick up a few things in Logan and I still needed to get in my run for the day I talked myself into it. I didn't want to run it too hard but just get a good workout. When I decided to go it was 27 deg at home and fairly calm. The race started at 10 and we didn't leave until 9:00 at which time it had started snowing and the wind had picked up. When we got to Smithfield there was no snow falling and it was warmer but there was quite a bit of wind. My wonderful  wife went in and signed me up so I had time for a 2 mile warm up. 

     The first 1/2 mile is a pretty good climb and I just took it easy. We then turned and had a nice downhill for the rest of the mile which I finished in 6:31. The second mile was all downhill and really didn't push much and finished in 6:05. The rest of the race was all uphill. It wasn't too steep but directly into the wind. It started to feel much harder during this mile in 6:32. Last .1 at 5:47 pace. Not a great time but a good workout.

     Afterward I ran another 6 miles with Paul and Scott. It had started snowing and we started out into a pretty substantial wind. I was still wearing shorts from the race and was wondering for the first little bit if the shorts were a mistake running into the blowing snow but once I got warmed up and we got into some areas more protected from the wind it wasn't too bad. Glad I went.