Running For Trevor

7.5 in Salem with Jen, 7:30 pace.  So tired lately....I just cannot seem to go to bed at a decent hour anymore.  Maybe I need to start drugging myself with benedryl or something.

Planks/pushups

I am trying to stay in marathon shape just in case I decide I am capable of racing UVM.  I am kind of a stubborn runner...  Jen joined me for the first 10.  4 mile warmup, 4 mile tempo 6:37, 6:16, 6:12, 6:15, 4 miles steady pace (7:05) 2 mi tempo 6:28, 6:11, 1 mile easy and then another 2 mi tempo 6:30, 6:22, 1 mile cool down to get the 18 miles in.  Weird workout I know but it broke things up well and made it go by fast.  I was completely toasted at the end which did not really help my confidence.  But I've had a lot of hard workouts in the past 7 days.  Feet bothered me when going fast but the pain eased with the breaks in between tempos.  18 miles in 2:04.

Another early morning run. I've been breaking my running religion of not running before 6am a lot lately. The sunrise was beautiful and I ran nice and slow. Very enjoyable 6 miles. No watch.

En route to Rochester, MN. Thanks so much to everyone for the positive comments yesterday. I'm sorry I've been a bad supporter and blogger lately. Life has gotten busy on me...very excited to be getting away for a bit. :)

10 beautiful miles of sight seeing and exploring the city in Rochester, Minnesota.  My friend Julia lives about a quarter of a mile from Silver Lake which is a 1.8 mile paved running trail that connects to all of the trails in the city.  Today I connected to the Cascadia trail that goes out to the cascadia lake.  I did 10 x 1 min on/off on the way back at about a 5:30-5:50 pace.  Other than that I just really enjoyed soaking in the sights.  The great thing about Rochester is there are tons of paved trails and endless placed to run.  However the unfortunate thing is the paved running trails are only open about 6-7 months a year because the weather in the winter is so terrible.  Luckily for me the weather is perfect right now.  I really did luck out with the timing of this trip.

2 mile walk with the pups around the lake.  Headed to the Mall of America this afternoon and then off to Fargo in the morning.  I will be pacing 1:40 for the Fargo Half Marathon on Saturday where the weather is predicting 25mph winds and 75% chance of thunder storms.  Should be fun! :)

True Rochester weather today. 15-20mph winds and thunder storms....good practice for Fargo tomorrow I suppose. 5.5 miles nice and easy. 8:11 pace felt really good once I got going. Soaking wet!

1 mile warmup with the beautiful blonde and tan Becca. :-)

13.1 miles pacing the Fargo Half marathon 1:40 group. 

5 mile split:  7:35 pace

15k split:  7:35 pace

Finish time:  1:39:27 / 7:36 pace.  A little dissapointed that I was off but in my defense I was about 3 seconds ahead of pace every mile and rather than pitter patter around into the finish I just maintained the same pace and ended up finishing a bit early.  I tried to do a good job but I'm no treadmill!  Most of the people that started with me ended up finishing ahead of me which is awesome.  The course was great and the weather was also pretty good for the half.  On a personal note my feet bothered me starting at mile 8 and I was thanking my lucky stars I wasn't pacing the full.

2 hour break hanging out in the dome, getting interviewed on the local Fargo TV station (I'm famous in Fargo) and letting Elite marathoner John Njoroge from Kenya back into the dorms.  Me and Becca sat and talked to him for about 20 minutes and it was incredibly humbling...wow!  He had to drop from the marathon because of a hamstring injury and it was just eye opening to hear his story.  Most of us assume that these elite marathoners are well off and have unlimited resources.  So not the case for some of these Kenyan runners that just kind of live race to race without any other income.  When they are injured the make no money and cannot support there families.  Interesting stuff and a very humbling experience for me.  Definitely one of the highlights of my weekend.

8.5 miles out on the marathon course between running with Matt & Julia, 9:22 pace.  About 3 with Matt and 4.5 with Julia.  The conditions for the marathon were pretty terrible.  When Julia finished it was 82 degrees and 80% humidity.  Yuck!  Both of them PR'd and I was very glad that they tolerated me running with them.