Tune-Up Week

I ran pretty fast this week, a tune-up week of sorts before the Get in Gear next Saturday.  I'm signed up for the 10K and am pretty confident I can crush my time from last year (39:09) but am rather dubious that I can PR; kinda depends on the weather.  If it's cool like today, then we have a chance, but long-range forecast looks a little on the warm side.  It's a fast course, so 38 should be doable.

I ran 17 miles today and was able to crank out half-marathon in under 1:30 out in the trails.  I ran 12 miles consistenly around 6:45 pace, so I am feeling pretty good about my fitness right now.  I felt a little beat up by miles 16, but all signs point toward a pretty good half-marathon perfomance in a few weeks.

Looking ahead to the fall and I have my eye on a few marathons.  Des Moines looks pretty flat, with only a couple substantial hills early.  It will be nice to get the hills out of the way early rather than fighting them at mile 21 or later.  Whistlestop in Wisconsin looks like a good race as well, but the trail is all dirt, so may be a little slower than Des Moines.  Plus Des Moines is so exotic.  Hey, I can visit George the Chili King after the race!

I got schooled by one of my marathon clinic participants this week.  I have been introducing various interval and tempo work-outs every Thursday and this week I decided to pace each of them to see how fast they could run a mile.  Figured it was a good fitness test.  Stan was the last runner, and we agreed upon a sub 7 pace to start and see how much below that we could get.  We hit the lap button and Stan was off like a Hussein Bolt!  Now I can run several sub six miles in a row, but I really suck at going from really slow to really fast that quickly.  We were at a half mile and my Garmin was reading 5:56!  Holy crap Stan, what the hell is this?!  We settled down to a 6:20/6:30 pace and then he fired it up again in the hills and dipped down to 6:00 again.  I finally started to settle into this pace about three-quarters of the way in and we ended up around 6:20.  If you are reading this Stan, nicely done!  I didn't pace Stan, Stan paced me!

Happy Running!