Happy Hump Day!!!

Sorry for the delay - the crazy combination of heavy work, running, and no sleep took its toll on me! First, here is a fun article from the Wall Street Journal comparing Usain Bolt's speed amongst animals! They think he's about the 30th fastest on the list, behind the likes of a cheetah, grizzly bear, and white tailed deer. Next, World Marathon Champion Abel Mutai sets his sights on the world record marathon time. Wants to bring the record back to Kenya, where pretty much all long distance times/titles are currently!

Here is a quick recap of my running week which has gone great so far. Monday, did easy 4 with Crystal after a looooong day of work. Weather was fine - cool, sunny, mid 70's. We hit the trails, did an out and back on the flatter route. Nothing special to note - kept pace very honest, and tried to loosen up the legs which were tired after the 22 miler the day before. Started slow, but loosened up quickly and finished fine. Total mileage: 4 miles - splits were between 8:30-9:30 minute pace.

Tuesday evening, did our run in the early evening, weather was windy but cool - temps in the 70's. We decided to run towards the university and back, a hillier route. First mile, started slow but quickly picked it up. Towards the turnaround, Crystal snarled at me saying I was obviously feeling good if we were moving this quickly, so I let her lead coming home. Not surprisingly, I watched the splits get quicker and quicker, go figure, and this quickly became a progressive negative split run. Around the last mile, completely dropped the hammer and tore into it. Legs felt great, was tricky coming back because of the wind but was completely fine. Total mileage: 6 miles - splits were: 8:23, 7:36, 7:35, 7:26, 7:21, 6:44 (note the first 3 miles where I was leading vs. warrior princess's last 3).

Decided to get today's easy run out of the way, so we met bright and early and hit the trails. Chilly outside starting out (high 50's/low 60's), legs were lethargic but ok. Did Glen Carbon route out and back, and felt ok for the most part. First couple miles just trotted along, ran through quite a few spider webs - BLAH!!! The turnaround eventually came, so the run was going pretty quickly. Coming back home, we have to cross a street and we saw a school bus stopping to pick up kids for school, followed by a pretty long trail of cars. Well, Crystal does not stop for anybody nor any vehicles, and we were about 50-75 yards before the intersection with kids still boarding the bus, so guess who turns on the jet propeller legs?! Ugh, was not happy about going from nice, easy pace to ridiculous uphill sprint, but we didn't have to stop. Kind of woke us up, so the rest of the run flew by. Total mileage: 5 miles - splits ranged from 8:30 to 9:20 I think?

Legs are pretty tired right now, probably from 2+ weeks of insane running, so going to switch Thursday and Friday for off days, which will give us almost 2 days of rest. Fri, we'll do our scheduled track work, Sat. long run, and Sunday pace run.