They all can't be "easy" runs.

3.5 miles. hood route. 6:30 am start. 

I can't wait until after Easter, when all of the snowbirds leave. I am so tired of instructing these folks that they have the right of way. Look, it's dark, you have tinted windows, I can't see you, and I get that you want to show me that you see me, but this process works a lot better, if everybody just obeys the rules of the road. When you stop in the middle of a 45 mph road to give me room to cross a very small diveway, you are putting yourself in real danger. I don't run with any distractions. I am looking for you. You have the right of way. Just go. You can brag to your friends about what a safe driver you are some other day.  

7.5 miles. Hood route. No SWOM today. The weather has been great. 6 am start. 

7.5 miles. Hood route to legacy trail and back. 6 am start. Cool and breezy.

7.5 miles. Hood route. 5:45 am start. 67 degrees.

3.5 miles. hood route. 6 am start. 70 degrees. 

Then the health testing people came into the office (this is for reduced insurance costs). I had to fast before going to work today. But dang! I must have become shorter over last year. One of the most important metrics they use is BMI. I have to get below 170 pounds to not be considered "overweight"?  Right now, I'm 10 pounds shy of "obese", apparently.

I don't think I'm going to see 170 anytime soon. I'll still get the reduced insurance plan, for sure. I have other means to get the points I need.

I work in a building with 80 people. If I'm overweight, then so are 75 of my co-workers. 

10.7 miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail, over SWOM and back to Colonia, and back. 7 am start. Hot Humid. 

Because I am still ticked off about people using pseudo-science and numbers to indirectly call me a "fatty" yesterday, I decided to see if I could still get under a 7 minute mile if I wanted to, on the way out. I got a 6:42. There was some effort there. On the way back, I did it again. 6:47. Much more relaxed. Like, I thought it was going to be @ 7:30ish. All of this does nothing to change my BMI. And these aren’t times that will go in record books. But it does reinforce my opinion that my health is defined by more than BMI.

Also, we went to the Venice High School vs. North Port baseball game last night at the new Braves Spring Training Facility in North Port. What a great venue for high schoolers. I ate some popcorn.  I think the excess salt made me feel like I had a size 11 tongue on this run!

3.5 miles. hood route. 7 am start. Then 2 around the block miles with Johnny. He is somewhat serious about doing decent at the gator wilderness 5k.

3.5 miles. hood route. 6 am start. Then 2 around the block miles with Johnny.

5.5 miles. Hood route. 5:45 am start. In the rain. Then 2 around the block miles, including 2 quarter mile pickups. 1:27, 1:32. The run was short - stridey, so I threw in some speed. Rain was steady at the end of it all.

5.5 miles. Hood Route. Then 1.2 around the block miles with Johnny. 5:45 am start. 

3.5 Miles. Hood route. 5:45 am start.

Hood. 6 am.

7 miles. In Winter Haven. FL. 11 am start. Hot. Tommy's soccer team is in the state championship tournament tbis weekend. They won this morning 5 to 1. Tomorrow is the final. If they win there, apparently we go to Baton Rouge for regionals. Anyhow, after the game this morning, i got to run around a lake in Winter Haven near Legoland. It was a decent run, considering the busy morning and all.

Good luck to all the FRB-ers going to Boston!

3.5 miles. Hood route. 7 pm start. Tommy's soccer team lost the state championship final this morning 2-0. Then we drive home and unpacked and cleaned. We have 1 more tournament in 2 weeks. Then that's the end of the season. It has been a really long season. Everyone is totally burned out.

Tryouts for next year are mid May!

7.75 miles. Hood route to legacy trail over the SWOM bridge. Smooth. 70 something degrees. 5:45 am start.

7.5 miles. Hood Route. 6 am start. 67 degrees? less than 50% humidity? dew point below 50? Where am I? Is this heaven? 

Missed running yesterday after 25 straight days. I played a bunch of 5 on 5 soccer last night, so it's not like I'm a couch potato or anything. I was still a bit ticked about missing yesterday, because this low dew point, low humidity stuff doesn't last forever around here. If I get decent weather, I need to jump on it. I wasted an opportunity yesterday. Enough about yesterday. 

Today - 7.75 miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail over SWOM bridge and back. 5:50 am start. Fast-ish mile on the way out. 6:35. Fast-ish mile on the way back. 6:38. I'm starting to like this fast mile thrown in running thing. I've been running easy miles for 2+ years. It's about time I push it. Even just a little bit. 

7.75 miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail over SWOM Bridge and back. Slow but steady pace. late start - 6:15. The humidity has returned. 

So on Tuesday night, I was talking to my dad next to his car. I commented that it was the cleanest car I have ever seen. Like a mirror. He spent roughly 6 hours on Sunday detailing his car. It must be nice to be retired. Then he started singing "Working at the car wash blues." I haven't thought about Jim Croce in years! So, since Tuesday, one Jim Croce song or another has been rattling through my head at all times. This morning it was "One less set of footsteps." So there's that. 

13.4 miles. Hood route to legacy trail over the SWOM bridge to Venice Avenue and back. 7:45 am start. Very windy. 2 of the first 4 miles were right into the wind. The last 2 miles I was really dragging.

5.5 miles. Hood route. 7 am start.

5.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start. 

7.75 miles. Hood Route to Legacy Trail over SWOM Bridge and back. Fast-ish mile on the way out - 7:12. Fast-ish mile on the way back - 6:52. 6 am start. Humidity, ah, there you are. 

I ate WAY too much egg salad yesterday. That's not the best runner diet. 

3.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start.

3.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start. Feels like Florida summer. 

My first trail race. I have seen first hand the good work that this camp has done. I believe in the cause of this race, so naturally, I wanted to run it, even though I know nothing about trail racing, and I am not really race ready for anything. My boys ran the 5k. I ran the 10k. They start the 15k and the 10k together at 8 am. Then wait a bit, then start the 5kers. We live an hour from the camp, so we had to get up pretty early for this. We got there, got our bibs, and took the tractor pulled trailer to the start. We wandered about checking out what we could of the camp, did some strides, and looked at the lake. The course goes around this lake to start, on dirt and grass, then into some single track on shell that was not very well compacted, over a couple of small narrow bridges, and then moving out between all of those; dirt, grass, pine straw, shell, sand, narrow, wide, and so on. It was a real mixed bag. Scenic as all get out. Fog through the pines. Running through the oak hammock. Pretty stellar stuff. Anyhow, the first chunk of shell running slowed me down quite a bit. I had to work super hard to get through it. I got turned around and had to double back a couple of times. not really long distances, but enough to annoy me, and get in my head. Then just before mile 3, I had this woman come up behind me and say "I'm pacing myself off of you." (I had a very similar experience in a previous marathon, and it kind of ticked me off.) I said, "you know, I've gone off course a couple of times already". Then she told me that if we got lost it wouldn't be her fault. Is that funny? She should be a comedian! Then we hit a big grass patch, and I left her. It was really great cruising in the grass. But in the next shell zone, she caught back up to me, and I could hear her crunching away behind me. We went around a really tight turn, and my left foot caught a ditch all wrong and I mildly rolled my ankle. I stopped running long enough at this point for her to pass me. I said "just go". I decided to just jog it in, to save my ankle. Then it was just me, making hard turns through the pine trees like I was skiing. A few good long straight grass patches, and my ankle started to feel decent again. Then back to the lake. Big wide areas for running until about a half mile to go, near the POPs, they turn you onto single track stuff. After getting off course at least 7 times, this was the worst part of the race. If you get behind some super slow 5kers here, you're done for. There is no "out of the way" for them to get to. I may have yelled a bit here. So then the course gets wide again, and I cruised through the finish. As it turns out, I won my age group. This is the coolest race award I have ever received. It is a routed, emblazened hunk of a log, cut into a disc segment to look like a race medal. There was an enormous food spread after the race. Shrimp and grits, biscuits and gravy, bacon on a stick, tons of food. They had some healthy stuff too. I tried the acai (is that how you spell it?) berry smoothie. Even though a ton of stuff went wrong in the race, I still had a really good time and plan on going again next year. Like I said, I believe in the cause. The boys did decent in their 5k as well. They were too busy jumping off a dock and swinging off a rope swing into the lake to hang around for me getting my award though. 

This race reinforced a couple of things I already knew. 1. "Racing" isn't "running". I forget that sometimes because I go so long between races. The mentality in a race is different, and you just can't get there running solo miles. I need more frequent, shorter, races in my life. 2. I could also add some longer tempos to the running plans. But we already knew that they can't all be easy runs. 

The real story of this weekend was the brutal schedule. This is the last soccer touranament of the season. So Friday night - game in Sarasota. Saturday morning - races in Charlotte County. Saturday noontime - game in Sarasota. Saturday evening - beach for sunset. Sunday morning - game in Sarasota. Sunday noontime - Avengers End Game. Sunday evening - Church childrens program. (I have been involved with the 5th and 6th graders small group for a couple of years, and I do not like to miss it for something like soccer.) This weekend has left me incredibly thirsty. It's crazy. I can't drink enough water. 

....What a weird ending to a race report.....

7.75 miles. Hood route to Legacy Trail over SWOM and back. 5:45 am start. It's getting warmer out there. All running systems appear to be functioning post-race.

So I've got that going for me, which is nice. 

5.5 miles. Hood route. 6 am start. Warm.