Quest For Boston

Long run with Dave today.  Averaged 8:00 minute miles but it felt faster. Cool and windy.  Last  5 miles were at 7:45's.

Cold and rainy this morning.  I decided I'd have to use the treadmill in the basement; which is one of my most dreaded things to do; but that's what I bought it for.  I did a mile warm up and decided to use my indoor time to do some hills.  I proceeded with the following workout.

All miles done at 8:00 mm

1 mile warm up

1 mile at 2.5% incline

1 mile at 5% incline

2 miles at 7.5% incline

1 mile at 5% incline

1 mile at 2.5% incline

1/2 mile warm down

Even though the basement is fairly cool I was sweating like a pig. I really wanted to cut the run short but kept telling myself- "Just 5 more minutes"  It's amazing how you can fool yourself even when you know you're doing it.

No running today as I had to take the boat off island for a day of  shopping.  One disadvantage of living on an island. It becomes an all day affair.

Not a lot of sleep last night as I had to get up early to prep and put the turkey in the oven. Still felt pretty good though.  This is a small race so my second place finish wasn't too surprising.  The race went off at 8:30 am with temps around 38 degrees. I tried realy hard not to go out too fast and I probably ended up  going out to slow. A 6:25 first mile was definetly slower than I had wanted.  The good news was that all my miles were negative splits.

6:25  6:03  5:58  I averaged  about 6:07's for the whole race.  I was happy with my time as historicaly this race is slow- everyone felt it was a bit long. Personaly I thought it was fine.  With the milage I've been putting in lately I didn't expect too much. Plus with another race on Saturday, it's nice to have somewhere to improve to.

A nice little recovery run today.  The calfs were realy tight but loosened up nicely by mile 2.  Other than that I feltgood for a day after.  Just tired legs. Another race tommorrow and then I have nothing scheduled.

This is probably my favorite race out here on the Island.  It follows the high school x-country course and reminds me of the "old" days of my youth.  If only I could run as fast today.  It's a fairly flat cousre but very sandy.  You're forced to go side to side along the course to avoid the deep stuff so your time is definetly affected.  After Thursdays run my legs were definetly a little slow.  I thought that I was running the first mile a bit quicker than the last race but found myself coming through in exactly the same time, 6:25.  That's when I knew I was in trouble.  I tried picking up the pace but there was no second gear. I did work hard for the rest of the race but couldn't make headway on anyone in frontof me.  I did manage to hold on to my place however, so that was a moral victory. First place for division winners was chocolates from the local chocolatiere, so my wife was happy with my finish also.  Good news is the racing season is over and I can concentrate on building up a good base for a spring marathon, if I can stay healthy.