I only run on days that end in a "y."

Cool morning - very quiet out on the streets.  7.5 easy - a bit stiff from Saturday but the legs felt better after a few miles.

The group schedule was 10 on the trail with the last 20 minutes hard effort.  I decided to run from the house.  I didn't feel like the trail again, and with Russ nursing an injury (I warned him he was pushing it a bit) it would be just me out there after a while, so I didn't see a need to drive all the way downtown.  Besides, last week when I tried this on the trail it did not work out too well.

The legs felt really good so I let them carry me.  I ran some rollers out for a while then down Jollyville and turning around at the Arboretum, coming back up Jollyville and some back streets to the house.   Nice gradual by steady elevation gain on the way back.  I turned it into a progression run. I kept thinking of what Joe Rubio said in Kevin Beck's book (the chapter I have based most of my training on) about how he would do his progressive 15 mile progressive runs: 5 eays, 5 @ MGP, and 5 as hard as he could.  Well, I wasn't doing 15 miles today, but stuck with the idea for the run that I had, except that I had too many easy miles up front.  Maybe next time something like 4, 4 and 4.  Well see, this run seemed good enough!

8:51, 7:52, 7:41, 7:21, 7:13, 7:10, 7:05, 6:50, 6:47, 6:50, 6:29, 6:15.

I need new shoes!

Cutting back mileage a bit this week - that's the plan anyway.

Actually a pretty warm and muggy morning - 6.5 easy in the Cortanas.  I really don't like these shoes that much - it's too much shoe.  Good enough for plodding along, I guess.  8:40 AP.

Wow - 66 degrees this morning.  The Boston schedule had some funky fartlek while the rest of the group had intervals.  I emailed Mike last night and we decided the intervals would be good to get in some turnover.

We did 5 sets of 600m, 400m, and 200m, with 200m active recovery in between intervals and 2 minutes recovery between sets.  We kept moving a bit during the 2 minute recoveries as well.  These were more "endurance" based intervals than pure speed and we ran them as such.  Never felt out of breath and was nice and relaxed.  In fact, Mike and I were singing "singing in the rain" during some of them, just to make sure we were not working too hard.   I only pushed it on the very last 200m.

3.6 mile easy followed by 5 x 600, 400, 200 sets.

1.  2:14, 1:27, :44

2.  2:14, 1:30, :44

3.  2:09, 1:25, :44

4.  2:06, 1:27, :42

5:  2:07, 1:28, :36

1.6 easy back to the annex.

Only 10 miles for the morning, but I was OK with that since I am cutting back a bit this week.

Stayed on the trail behind the office and then around the small lake.  8:40 AP

Nice morning for a run!  40 degrees, no wind.  We ran a point-to-point down to the trail with some rollers along the way, but a net elevation drop, with a few miles of hills tacked on the end to mimic Boston.  This is the lollipop loop that I died on 3 weeks ago and which today I dominated.  It felt so awesome to take the hills without slowing down too much and definitely not stopping as I did last time.  It was confident booster.  Several factors probably helped me today - I wore my new racing flats which were phenomenal (thanks SJ!), I ran the speed work on Thursday easy and did not kill myself, and I had a couple small baguettes last night before bed (thanks Dasha for the advice.)

Most of the group did 15.5 but Mike and I went up another mile and parked after dropping a few runners off at the other stop.  We passed most of the runners on the hills of expo - we were flying here - looked at my watch once and it read 6:20.  We slowed a bit.  We picked up another runner at a water stop and he had ideas of of turning it into a race I guess, and Mike fell into the trap trying to keep up and pass him.  They were at 6:10 or so and I let them go.  We still had the hills and I was not going to die on them today.  So I ran the last few miles by myself, which I actually like since I don't feel like I have to keep up with anyone.  

Fastest long run yet @ 6:44 overall pace.  Maybe I need to adjust my marathon goal a bit.  We will see how it goes over the next few weeks.  6:40's felt really good.

7:34, 7:05, 6:55, 6:44, 6:42, 6:31, 6:27, 6:20, 6:34, 6:48, (here come the hills) 7:05, 6:53, 6:45, 7:08, (homeward stretch) 6:35, 6:25, 6:02 (including a few strides.)