Every Run is a Great Run!

After mile warmup on treadmill ran Eagle View with Paul and Cory. I don't think any of us were terribly motivated to begin with, however we charged up the hill in pretty good time and I felt like we pushed it pretty well on the way back.  I was grateful to be running with the group today as I never would have worked nearly as hard running solo.

Splits as follows (my watched glitched the 1st mile so I'm just guessing on that mile):

1 - 8:30 ?

2- 8:24

3 - 8:32

4 - 7:35

5 - 7:04

Oh yeah, I guess I also ran a slow (9:30??) mile on the treadmill.

Crosstrain: bike/weights/stairs

Good day. Bad run.  Ran later than usual today due to taking day off from work to take my son to the MTC. The last couple days have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster. I had hoped to continue the Wednesday pattern of doing are 7:00m/mi tempo runs doing something over 3 miles at that pace. However after 2 miles it was obvious it wasn't going to happen today as I fought nausea for most of the run. Rather than list my pitiful split times I decided to list my top 5 excuses for having such a bad run, listed in order of probability.

1) The gigantic breakfast I had this morning at IHOP (Spinach & mushroom omelette with 3 huge pancakes on the side). I was burping it up throughout the run, eccentuating the nausea effect. I may not be eating at IHOP for a while.

2) Running solo instead of with my inspiring running partners.

3) Emotional letdown after all the MTC excitement during the week.

4) Ran too hard on Monday.

5) I am a wimp (actually this should be probably be higher in the list)

Crosstrain 40min: Bike/Stair

Cross-train

Ran early with the SF running crowd. Would have liked to run with the Relay Team but had too many committments for later in the day.

Had a nice long run other than a few portions of the run where we about froze our fannies off. As we ran near the mouth of SF canyon with the windchill I'm thinking it was effectively around -10 degrees. I don't think my face has ever been that cold before, I could hardly even talk. But we were rewarded later as we got the wind at our back and the sun came out to warm us up.

I was pleased with this run in that for once in a long, long time I didn't feel totally exhausted and out of gas the last few miles of the run. I had intended to run 18-20 miles but ended up with around 21 by the time I finally got home. I think part of what made the run better is that I ran the first 6 miles by myself (from 5am to 6) before the main group met and I did these miles particularly slow (9-9:30 pace). The rest of the miles running with the group I ran my normal long-run pace of around 8:25-8:50 to ended up with an overall average pace just below 9:00. Not very fast but in line with what I intend on doing for Boston. Next Saturday I'll plan on running few miles (12-16) but at faster pace (8:00-8:30).