No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Heb 12:11
Screwshoes
Poor man's cleats. this works a LOT better than you would think! Very quick and easy.
LittleHotties
Are you cheap like me? Put those little hotties in a ziplock bag and use them again tomorrow!
Kickstart your dead Garmin
Hold down the reset/lap button and the mode button together to get your 205/305/310xt to restart if it won't turn on or if it freezes up.
Eugene Marathon (26.2 Miles) 03:16:21, Place overall: 243, Place in age division: 24
Total Distance
26.20
Great race! My only complaint is that I didn't get to meet Allie :(
Official time and details coming soon.
This was by far the best Marathon I've run. Even aside from my time,
every aspect of this race was better than any I've run before. The course, the support on the course, the bands, the enthusiastic
crowds, it just couldn't get any better than this. It was such a
positive experience that I never worried even once about meeting my goal. I actually had a lot of fun during the first 20, maybe even too much fun :) Everybody had something to say about my flaming running outfit so I would always
comment back with "thank you" or "I wore this just for you; my fans mean everything to me" or "I'm burnin' I'm burnin' for you". That gernerated a lot of chit chat between me and the other runners around
me too. Everyone I came in contact with was so friendly, I've never been so social during a race. I know I wasted a lot of energy runnin' my mouth instead of my feet, but it was fun.
We drove down to Eugene on Saturday
morning and stayed at the Travelers Inn which is a total dive, but it was clean and the manager was super friendly. He even offered to drive
me to the start line in the morning. After the race he wanted to hear all about it and was very happy for me. He insisted that I load up with
bananas and muffins left over from "breakfast" when I checked out too.
I was up at 5:00am for coffee and my pre-race ritual of realeasing the
hostages (that was for Burt). At 5:20 I received some encouragement from baldnspicy on facebook, Thanks Wes, you're a cool dude. At 6:30 when the hostage negotiations were finally over, I headed to the start line and found my way to the 3:20 pace group where we heard the national anthem and were sent off by Linda Prefontaine. The first few miles were mostly downhill and I didn't even notice the uphill stretch between3 and 5. I was looking forward to the "big one" at mile 8 and it was a breeze. Miles 14-15 came with a strong headwind that slowed me down a bit, but I was back in the 7-teens and still feeling good after that. At mile 18 I started feel like I was working a little harder and decided to back off the effort a little, hoping to save enough for a strong finish. I figured as long as the 3:15 pace group wasn't passing me I was fine. At mile 20 I picked up the effort, but my speed didn't change :( By 22 I was sure I had hit "the wall", at mile 23 the wall hit me! About this time I also remembered that there was no 3:15 pace group so I probably wasn't as fine as I thought.. I was too tired to fiddle with my watch or to do the math to see how slow I could go and still BQ so I just pressed on and tried to think about how short a 5k is. That's all I have left to do right? Only 5k left between me and Boston! My quads felt like hardening cement and from there each mile was about 30 seconds slower than the last even though I was running harder. I sure hope I looked better than I felt coming across the finish line. Post race recovery was quick considering how spent I was. I downed a couple bottles of water and some bananas and was ready to go. I still can't believe how much food there was in the finish area.
They really take good care of their runners.
I REALLY, REALLY APPRECIATE all the encouragement and advice from everybody here at FRB. I would not have done this without you! I'm looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible next year in Boston!
I started out thinking I would do a progression run and my first mile was too fast. So I decided at mile 2 to just run a steady pace working a little harder on the hills and easy on the flats.
Distance   Split pace 1.00   7:27 2.00   7:21 3.00   7:30 up 4.00   7:12 down (so much for even splits) 5.00   7:22 6.00   7:28 7.00   7:28 8.00   7:22 9.00   7:22 10.00   7:22
I found this picture of Baldnspicy's homies today. Should I tell him that his friends may be a bad influence on him?
I didn't want to do it in the road today so I ran through the trails in the park for the first 5 miles. I saw a some beatles, a blackbird, three cool cats, a raccoon that I named rocky and an old brown shoe on the trail. I was having fun, but I kept getting rocks stuck in my rubber soles and felt like I was getting nowhere, man. So I decided to get back to the paved path around the lake. Once I got to the lake I felt free as a bird and couldn't slow down. Don't ask me why, but I felt like I could run all the way across the universe. I wish I could do this eight days a week. Dig it?
My friend Mark is training for the Seattle Rock and Roll and did his first 20 miler today. I went along at his pace to keep him company and we both had a great run. We ran through the Puyallup/Orting Valley farmlands on the Foothills trail and stopped for an icy dip in the Carbon River before grabbing some breadsticks and cold drinks at Route 66 Pizza.
Distance   Split pace 1.00   8:00 2.00   8:00 3.00   8:10 4.00   8:16 5.00   8:28 6.00   8:36 7.00   8:33 8.00   8:28 9.00   8:40 10.00   8:28 11.00   8:21 12.00   8:30 13.00   8:40 14.00   8:26 15.00   8:35 16.00   8:41 17.00   8:17 18.00   8:34 19.00   9:04 20.00   9:10 21.00   7:21 Â
I tried picking up the speed a little toward the end to see how ready I am for that 5k this weekend.
Distance Split pace 1.00 7:44 - still stuck in low gear from my 21 miler with mark 2.00 7:26 - getting better 3.00 7:28 - up hill 4.00 7:19 - feeling good 5.00 7:15 - feeling better 6.00 7:29 - up hill 7.00 7:30 - getting ready for some speed 8.00 6:26 - I can't maintain this for two more miles. 9.00 6:47 - I can do better than that. 10.00 6:35 - this feels pretty good 10.52 7:27 - cool down
I decided to make up for the progressive run I messed up and bailed out on last week and get in my 3 fast miles at the end. I started out too fast again just like last week, but figured I'd go for it anyway. It was a near perfect run with the exception of miles 3 and 4 being upside down by 1 second. I wasn't really knocking myself out until the last mile and that was a near race effort at about 99%. The little cool down at the end was way overdue :)
Chloe Clark 5k (3.1 Miles) 00:19:27, Place overall: 3, Place in age division: 1
Total Distance
3.10
8:30am
Well, I didn't break 19 like I hoped, but it was another PR! I've finished 13 races since joining FRB and PR'd every time except the Bloomsday 12k where I just paced my daughter and took pictures. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of connection there.
Today's race was a small one in Dupont, a little town just south of Steilacoom. I think there were only about 5 or 6 competitive runners out of a field of maybe 100 or so. I think the first place guy came in at 18:55. Miles two and three of the course were a lot of dirt and blacktop trails with some rolling hills, tight corners and a few large mud holes to navigate. I wasn't able to give 100% through most of that for fear of wiping out and landing in the bushes. I started out in 3rd place and hung on to the two guys out front until we got to the first mud hole. From there they just kept slipping farther and farther away from me. At one point the fourth place guy was right on my shoulder. I tried to keep right for a while so he could get around me and he wouldn't make a move. Eventually he faded back and ended up finishing close to a minute behind me. I tried my best to make up for lost time at the end when we got back on the road and there just wasn't enough road left. Had I been familiar with the course I might have gone out faster, but that's a lot easier to say after the race :)
I thought it was cool that they gave division winners medals instead of ribbons, but kind of strange that there was nothing at all for the overall winners. There was also a raffle at the end with some nice prizes. I'll probably do this one again next year.
Today I saw a white bunny in the park. We always have hundreds of little short eared brown ones running around, but this little guy was white with floppy ears. He must have been someone's escaped pet. Or maybe I was just imagining it. I don't remember falling down a hole...
On a side note: My Ragnar Relay team for Northwest Passage is officially registered. Go team "Fly By Night"!! This will be my first ragnar and I'm totally psyched about it. We're a team of orphans who found each other on the teamfinder message board. It should be a lot of fun getting to know some new friends and running together.
I stepped on a nail yesterday while tearing down my deck and it was still throbbing a bit this morning so I put off my run until after church. My foot actually felt better on the run than my stomach did with the berry sundae Kym and I split at Costco on the way home.
