A.M. The weather today tested my belief in the Russian song I quoted to my children yesterday about nature not having such thing as a bad weather. A steady stream of snow was falling on me the entire 20.4 miles.Fortunately it was warm enough that it did not stick to the road. Also, fortunately, there was no significant wind either. Of the two adversaries I would chose wet snow over wind any day. I ran a 2 mile warm-up, and then a 10 mile tempo on my favorite course - two times the Fast Running Blog 5 miler. I organized a free race a couple of years ago on that course, thus the name. Unfortunately, the race has not shown a whole lot of interest. With the hard economic times, almost every house that is for sale is a short sale or foreclosure, people out of jobs, gas prices going through the roof, etc, you would think that there will be plenty of people that will come to run a race with no frills just to race, but go figure - they prefer "added value" for added price - food, fancy shirt, music, etc even when perhaps they cannot really afford it. So given the lack of interest on the part of the participants, and the lack of time on my part as well - the economy has changed my job situation to where I cannot devote as much time to the blog as I used to, I have not done that race since. But if I am wrong and there is now enough interest, I'll do it again. Send me a message with proposed dates if you would like to run it. The tempo went like this: 5:52 - 5:50 - 5:53 - 5:49 - 5:54 (29:18) - 5:49 - 5:48 - 5:53 -5:53 - 5:41 (29:05) total time 58:23, 5:50.3 avg. I felt OK, but could not get myself to go faster. Part of it was the snow, part was not having anybody to run with, part fatigue from the week, and part just plain lack of fitness. I was happy that I was able to turn my legs over some in the last quarter, and hit 81 in spite of all the negatives. Then I ran home, and finished the remainder of the 20.4 with the kids. Benjamin did 3, Jenny and Julia 2, Joseph 1, and Jacob 0.5.
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