Doug's Running Thingy

11.2 miles on the mountain bike easy ride around Tom Brown park while the team did their long run.  Calves and quads were pretty sore from the hills yesterday, so the bike was a welcome workout.

Well now, that was fun!  The car informed me that it was 58° as I drove the 3 miles to the trails at 7am - thats downright chilly for Tallahassee in late Sept.  After racing Saturday, riding easy Sunday, and failing epically yesterday in doing anything at all, I figured it would be a good day for a strong 5 miler, so I went out fast (for me right now) from the start.  First mile was 7:36, and from there I dropped to 7:22, 7:18, 7:16 and 7:18, with an easy cooldown the final .4 back to the parking lot.  I wish that I got a run in yesterday, but this run was very satisfying, and I'm not sure I would have been up for it had I run the 6 miles I was planning for yesterday.  Pace was about 20 seconds per mile faster than the 8K race a month ago, and I felt much better this morning than I did during that race.

Followed it up with a nice breakfast visit with Bret who was in town for a meeting.  Things are tripping along nicely - have a good day. 

Too dark this morning at 0630 to hit the trails safely.  Did my old standby 6-miler around the neighborhood.  Became very familiar with that loop when training for my first marathon several years back.  Took it nice and easy at about 8-8:15 pace.

Easy first mile, then 2 miles of minute on, minute off - quicker/more efficient than recent similar efforts.  On the neighborhood roads, I was more able to focus on form and pace than when I do this workout on the trails.  I must admit to this being a better effort than on the trails... not sure the joints will agree later today or tomorrow.  Finished with another easy mile back to the house where the boychild was just leaving for school in his "new" Maxima for the first time - huge smile on the punk's face.  We've been telling him for months that there was no way we were getting him a car on his 16th birthday.  Earlier this week, a coworker offered a well-kept '02 Maxima for $4K.  Tough to pass up when the interweb suggested 5-7K for similar vehicles.  At least its actually 2 whole weeks after his 16th - heh.

Half mile warmup then a nice little pyramid on the track - 100, 200, 300, 400, 300, 200, 100 all at about 70 second 400 pace with 90 seconds recovery.  Still really just doing these track workouts once a week to keep sharp for when I get serious in another couple months.  After the track work, I ran about 3 miles to the site of the cross country meet, and then I did at least 2 more miles running to get pics at the mile and 2-mile marks for both the boys' and girls' races - photos and results posted soon to maclayrunners.com.

We were without 2 of our top 5, and the other 3 were assigned pacing duty for 1st mile then tempo work through the finish.  Travis reports that he wants to tempo every race from here on in - was a lot of fun finishing with a strong fast final mile - says he must have passed 20 guys on the last mile.  He ran 17:47 after a 6 minute first mile - hes confident in going under 17 next Saturday at the big FSU Invite.  Most importantly for the day, the 4 through 7 runners either dropped their PR or had a season best.