Hills for breakfast, hold the gnats

Chilly, sunny morning.  Objective: Recovery run and 5K chaperone. A little over a mile of warmup jogging before having the honor of accompanying SnoFlake on her first 5K.  I'm sure she'll be posting her report shortly if she hasn't already.  I was so proud of her!  We did have some walk breaks, but FAR fewer than we do in our training runs.  Mr. Sno ran it too, in bare feet and beat us by about 10 minutes.  I never thought I'd see the day we all ran together.  What a wonderful experience!

42F, clear, w/ very bright moonlight.  2 miles easy, 1.5 miles MP effort, remainder = cool down.  No more resistance training for now, except for a few crunches this morning.  Stretches and Stick. 

Everything feels fine.  My "hard" mile and half were not terribly fast (mile 3 mostly downhill @ 9:48 and next half mile mostly uphill @10:00)  but I didn't really feel warmed up yet either.  I don't control this getting-old business.  ;)  I only observe, and somewhere between mile 3 and 4 I see that I usually speed up without trying.  That's when I know I'm warmed up. 

I'll try a short tempo run tomorrow, as prescribed by Sean.  Then a short run Thursday and I'm done until Sunday morning's marathon.  I might do a short, easy pool run Friday and/or Saturday.  

I can't wait to see charming Victoria again.  The last time we were there was about 11 years ago for my 40th birthday.  I was about 45 lbs overweight and had to hover over a toddler 80% of my waking life.  I remember on the boat trip over, the captain got on the speakers and announced, "we have a birthday on board....  it is... Mary so-and-so who is 30 years old today!"  Sigh.  It rained all weekend. Sigh.  And I still loved Victoria!  So, this should be a ton of fun.  Extended forecast looks dry -- and now I am only 10 lbs overweight.  For a marathoner that is.    :D

45F, partly cloudy. Tempo run: ~2 mi easy;  2 x 1 mi @ tempo w/ 1 min recovery b/t ;  1.5 mi c.d.   Tempo miles: 8:37, 8:32.  (Target 8:30)

The legs whined bitterly about not being warmed up to their liking.  So I'm pleasantly surprised to see the paces on those two tempo miles.  I thought I was quite a bit slower.  The oxygen deficit felt more like a VO2 workout.  And the Garmin pace reading, as you Garminites know, varied widely. I'm sure my true pace varied a lot too, since no part of my neighborhood runs are ever flat, and there are corners to turn and curbs to navigate.  

Mid 40s F, clear and starry.  Easy, short run.   

Very quiet in the neighborhood this early (4:45ish); I saw only one car.  Managed to scare myself turning my headlamp on someone's Halloween decorations.  lol