Doug's Running Thingy

On the neighborhood roads before sunup for 8 miles easy.  Ran this 8-mile loop many times prepping for my two and only marathons back in '04-'05.  Forgot how hilly it is - bleh.  Managed sub-8 pace for three of the miles and about 8:15 overall average - about what I expected.

Nice easy few miles in the neighborhood this evening to work out the soreness from 8 hilly miles yesterday.  Did two with the dog then another on my own.  A little foam rollerizing afterwards and legs are feeling pretty good.

Decent workout on the neighborhood roads this evening.  Six times two minutes on and one minute off sandwiched by 1.75 warmup and 1.25 cooldown.  Major heat wave going on, so that was less than ideal, but hit all the "ons" between 6:30 and 6:45 - that'll do for now. I'm majorly stressing out over the 15K this Saturday - keep telling myself its just a step up in training on the way to the half in Feb, but nine miles is a long freakin way for me, and to NOT race it just seems unlikely.  Hopefully I can stick to my plan of just going out easy for the first half at 7:50-8:00 pace and then coming back steadily picking it up - we'll see.

Well that worked out nicely - good confidence builder for Saturday - whew.  Did six somewhat hilly miles in the neighborhood. All miles between 7:50 and 7:57 and quite under control.  We'll see how it goes with three more on top of that.  Gonna take tomorrow off.

That was fun.  Awesome canopy road out and back 15K just north of Tallahassee on mostly clay roads.  First and last two miles were paved.  As Travis' coach had warned me, the hills are not brutal but they get your attention.  I had planned to go out in 7:50-8:00 pace to the turnaround - first five miles all were between 7:41 and 7:55, so not too bad.  At the turnaround I felt pretty good so I adjusted my goal from 1:14 to 1:12 and started increasing the effort a bit.  Last four miles were 7:54, 7:46, 7:37 and 7:09 - yah, got excited at the end - actually dropped under 7 pace for final 0.3 miles - pretty fun.  Another three weeks of training now before the half - I think I'll make it.

Travis ran a good strong tempo with his assistant coach.  They went out easy, just a bit ahead of me through 3rd mile.  After that, and especially at the turnaround, they dropped about 15 seconds per mile to finish at about 5:30 pace in 57 minutes - Trav placed 9th overall.