Dare to be great!

Went out this moring by my lonesome and hit the trail.  Went south into the ranches up and around a little loop and headed for home. 7:59 AP for the run.  Felt really good during the run, legs and lungs felt good.  I think the recovery week last week really helped, plus I got some good sleep last night considering I got up a 5am to run.  Should be a great training week.

Finished the run with two sets of hill sprints and running with no arms.

Woke up early this morning and looked out the window.  There was snow on the ground but looked like the roads were fairly clear.  Got on my outside running clothes and planned on heading over to the local high school track.  I opened the front door to leave to see it was still snowing and quite windy....so I wussed out and drove to the gym instead.

1.5 mile warm up then 3 x 1K repeats at 6:22 pace with a 3 minute cool down in between each repeat.  Finished with a 1.5 mile cool down at 8:41 pace.

I was all by myself in the gym and didn't have any music of anything to really keep me occupied.  Treadmills are not my favorite.  

Had some time during the lunch break at work so hit the gym and went 3.5 miles.  I kept it at a relaxed pace and only had 30 minutes.  AP 8:41 1st mile at 1.0 incline the rest at 1.5.  Felt good to get a little sweat going.

Due to the snow this moring went to the academy gym again and ran on the treadmills.  That's 3 days in a row, uggh.

I was nervous going into the run as my tempo run last Thurs. I cut short after 2 miles with a break in between the miles, and this week the plan was to run 4 straight at 10k pace.

The run turned out great.  1.5 warm up, then 4 miles at 6:39 pace, finished with a 1.5 mile cool down.

I wouldn't say it was easy, but it felt good to crank out some faster miles (faster for me anyways.) Got an easy recovery run tomorrow leading to a 14 mile progression run this weekend.  Good times, hopefully we can get rid of the snow.  I don't think I can do a long run on the treadmill.

Had a good run this morning.  I ran the course for the Saratoga Shamrock Half Marathon which is coming up in 2 weeks in Saratoga Springs.  I wanted to do a progression run with the first 7 miles at base pace then gradually increase each mile until the last mile was around my half marathon pace.  The course makes it easy to negative split with much of the uphill the first half.

The first 7 miles were as follows: 8:25,8:37,8:15,8:29,8:24,8:25,8:19  Had some good hills during these miles but tried to keep it easy and go with the flow.

Last 7 went like this:7:49,7:42,7:23,7:12,7:01,6:55,6:48  I finished the last mile running around the middle school to finish with 14.  These miles felt really smooth and the legs felt great.  It should be a great race in 2 weeks on rested legs.  AP pace for the run today was 7:50.

Last year was this was my first race in years, I am excited to see where I am now compared to last year.  My AP for the race last year was 7:33, I should be able to beat that.

Well off to go snowshoeing with the family up Hobble Creek.  Have a great day.