GO! STL Marathon Weekend and Boston Marathon Weekend!

The Kenyan Army of Destruction, Mosop goes for the world record, Terry Shea and Boston, heck of a 5K at the Stanford Invitational, Paula shooting for Gold now, not many elite Americans in Boston this year, the official Boston elite field (minus Tolo who just pulled out), more Mosop, awesome read on Adam Goucher, and Geoffrey Mutai comes back to defend his world's best.

Heart breaking not to be running on Boyleston this weekend, but will be working on my own end a the GO! STL Marathon relay with Crystal, Mike, and Gabe for the relay. Looking to do some work, so we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, April 11th - 7 miles (1 up, 4 miles tempo, 2 down). Met up with the training team in Forest Park on a gorgeous evening. Crystal talked me into doing some of her workout, so she, Matty D, and I went out and did an out and back from the Visitor's Center. Only wanted to do 4 miles (she was wanting to do 6 at tempo), since we were racing on the weekend and wanted to not push too hard. Ran on the soft trails, but had some issues with gripping on the surface. Let them go about 2.3 into the run, then ran back to the 2 mile mark/water station and waited for them to come back so I could run the last 2 miles in with them. Not surprisingly, the pace picked up a bit, and worked pretty hard coming in. Stretched for quite a while, but was overall happy with the work. Legs felt like garbage though, and my IT bands felt like stiff boards which restricted any stride I had. Hello foam roller! Splits were: 6:31, 6:24, 6:17, 6:15.

Thursday, April 12th - 6 miles. Ran with Mike and Crystal after work. Pre race strategy during our out and back on Old Faithful. Legs felt a bit better (after some excruciating foam rolling earlier), and we kept it pretty slow. One of those runs that seemed to take longer than it should, but was nice to knock it out. 53:40 total.

So I'm running the 2nd leg of the relay. We are shooting for the win (should be close according to the last few year's winning times), so I need to not blow up on my leg which is the longest and pretty hilly. Targeting 6:30 pace, but will keep it relatively conservative for the first couple miles as I work up Olive. But looking forward to some good team camaraderie, as we have a solid group that should run a solid time on Sunday. Good luck to all runners!