Turn your rut into a groove.

am--11.5 Sunbrook loop w/ some neighbors. A little later I went w/ a Gooblur relative out into SCRR, on the "Anasazi" trail, and shot the bull about cosmology, mythology, and language. I'm glad I got back on the trails again. I've been a little jumpy about snakes. 

am--5 Morning practice w/ the kids. Warm-up, core exercises, run, and stretch. I stayed with the lead pack and felt pretty good. In all honesty, the pace was probably a tempo pace for me. 

am--5.25 I have a little achilles ache, so I didn't run yesterday evening. I got out this morning and felt good.

pm--5 Ran a hill workout w/ the WBR teams. Probably not the best thing for my achilles, but oh well. I still feel all right. We ran up Webb Hill. I did it 1.5 times. Pretty killer. One thing I want to get better at in my running is hills. It's not the legs that dread them. It's the mind and the lungs. We'll see what we can do. It is cool to run w/ some awesome runners.  

pm--8.25 Set out for an easy 8--my long run this week--to see if the achilles would give me trouble. At first it did because the padded collar of my sock was sagging between my tendon and the back of the shoe. But I fixed that before I crossed Santa Clara Drive, and the tendon ache was very minimal for the rest of the run. I also tried to work a 10-second walk break into every mile. I'm going to go with that in the marathon to hopefully avoid an unscalable wall. Just as I went in and out of one of these breaks I think I passed Mike Warren out walking the dogs. The run felt great. 

am--8.25 Woke up and ran to the Speedster 5k/10k to help w/ the XC kids then ran home. On the way over, I was worried about getting to the course on time. On the way back, I was thinking about all the inspirational runners. Ironically, I ran faster on the way home even though it was hotter, and I was more tired. Was also hoping that Holt felt great today.