26 More Days!

Getting closer and closer to Boston, and it's starting to hit me through all this planning of that weekend that our group has been doing. Exciting times, this is going to be a lot of fun! Found this video that was posted on Big River's site that talks about the Shamrock Shuffle last weekend, pretty cool and has a couple Big River guys in it!

On to running - Monday, got home after work, messaged Crystal who had taken a vacation day. Weather was gorgeous - 60's and sunny. Pat joined us for a couple miles, so we hit up the Glen Carbon route nice and slow. Nothing special to report, legs felt ok but a little tired from the long weekend of running. Made it a point to take it really easy. Total mileage: 6 miles - total time out was 52 minutes.

Yesterday, another perfect weather day! 70 and sunny, actually pretty warm so waited an hour before starting my hill workout. 2.5 up, 8Xhills, 2.5 down. Hit up the big hill on Meridian Road, which is my go-to for challenging hill work. I was advised to work on running downhill repeats as much as regular hill work, so this workout flew by for me. Just to refresh, we mapped out a quarter mile on a pretty long, steep hill, that gets really steep toward the top. Ran the uphills pretty aggressively (5K pace), and didn't coast through the downhills but certainly relaxed and let gravity do its work. I read an article on Alberto Salazar that suggested this strategy (not to expend too much energy on downhills and let the slope do the work). Anyways, felt pretty decent during the workout - turnover was good, and wasn't tiring as much near the top like I usually do. Thumbs up to Mother Nature for giving us one of the best weather days of the year to this point. A big thumbs down to the fat woman who hogged the entire sidewalk then glared at me and mumbled some words towards me because she had to waddle over when I passed her - God forbid someone else might actually be walking/running on an absolutely perfect night! That seriously irritated me, and was arguably the sole reason I negative split my repeats. Total mileage: 7 miles - hill splits were: (uphill, downhill) 1:28, 1:27, 1:26, 1:24, 1:25, 1:24, 1:24, 1:21.

I hit the repeats faster than I thought I would, was very pleased. Easy mileage tonight, then hopefully a long tempo on Thursday barring bad weather conditions (rain, rain, and more rain in the forecast).