Getting back to Boston

Cold, wet day in the Ozarks. In spite of that, got in a baseball game and a run. Rain stopped about 20 minutes before first pitch and held off until the 8th inning. Took T back to the dorm (with the baseball he got from a Hog player during the game), came home and did a really slow 6.1. Legs are quite stiff and sore from yesterday's run, so there was no temptation to pick up the pace much at all. Still managed to average 9:31, though.

Also signed up for Bentonville this morning. It'll be good to get in a half this spring. Have no idea if I'll be in any kind of shape to run it, like, fast, but we'll see how it goes. Course looks fairly favorable for a fast time, better than the course I set my half PR on a year and a half ago. I'll probably see how that goes, or at least how further training is going, before I decide whether to sign up for Hogeye. At least I know I won't be on call that weekend.

Tried to do mile repeats tonight. Tried being the operative word. Plan was to do four, maybe 5 repeats at 10K pace. Of course, my 10K pace is purely a guess right now, and my guess was 7:20 or thereabouts. Warmed up for two miles, ran a mile. 7:23, not great, not terrible. Jogged for three minutes, tried again: 7:12. Maybe a touch fast, but more like it. Started jogging again. Then the brown bear arrived, and he wasn't happy. Took care of that, jogged some more, started repeat #3. Quads then forcefully reminded me that they hadn't yet recovered from the weekend. Got less than a quarter mile at 7:23 pace before they more or less shutdown. Took a long jog in between, tried again. Nope. About the same distance, 7:15 pace, no more. Jogged the last two miles to return home.

Probably should have waited until tomorrow to try this run, but I felt I needed some speed work before the half in Bentonville. I still do. Other thing I should have done, since I have done no speedwork in several months, is cut the intervals back from a mile to .8, or one lap of the park. That, I think, would have been more manageable, and I probably could have done at least four full reps, maybe five. Remember, dunderhead, you're 49 now, not 29.

Now two days of recovery and maybe try something else quick on Thursday.

No plan for tonight -- just started the watch and ran, never checked pace. Only looked at the watch once to check distance because I wasn't sure I hadn't zoned out and lost count of my laps at the park (I hadn't). Felt like I was running a little faster than usual, but that perceived effort has fooled me before. The wind started to pick up as the run progressed, and I was pretty sure I bumped up my effort to counter the wind, but again I wasn't sure.

Got home, stopped the watch and looked. Less than an hour for 6.88. Every mile faster than the one before. The last 0.88 was at sub-8 pace, roughly GMP. The kind of run I seem to be good at. Now if I could just get myself to run negative splits in a race, I'd have something. Anyway, a nice way to rebound from last night's dead legs.

Went out for 6 easy tonight. Ended up not so easy, but that's OK. Still less painful than watching the basketball game, in which a bad Arkansas team rolled over and died against a worse LSU team. Yuck. Again ran every mile faster than the one before it. If I can do that in Bentonville -- or St. George or Boston -- I've got something.

Nice. Three days after I crashed and burned on mile repeats, I pulled off an even tougher tempo run -- 2 X 15 minutes at essentially the same pace, which worked out to four miles. Average pace for those four miles: 7:29.5 -- just about exactly what I was shooting for Probably my best tempo run ever as far as hitting a target. A couple more of those and I might start to think I can run a decent half at Bentonville.

Went to the baseball game today, then got in a run, the Shiloh-Wagon Wheel loop. Finished it in five seconds less than an hour for 6.56. I'll take that. As I always seem to do, it got faster and faster, although I ran two straight 9:10 miles so it wasn't a case of every mile faster than the one before it. Plus the last .56 slowed all the way down to 8:39 pace, possibly because I had to run most of it on the grass due to all the traffic on Silent Grove. Especially the so-and-so who intentionally put on his highbeams right in my eyes... Anyway, good run. Set up for another 50-mile week if I can get in 9 or so tomorrow, in spite of work and another ball game. Think I may take my running stuff and run the trail from the south end right after the game.