Weekend Warriors

Back from a very relaxing weekend, and not ready to be back at work! First of all, let me give a well deserved shout out to some members in our running crew. Shane ran a 10K on Saturday in Georgetown, and had a very impressive 2 minute PR (41:38)! Tim ran a half marathon in Denver and PRed by 6 minutes!!! (1:54:01). And finally, a big shout out to our friend Ken, another high school buddy who is my running mentor and basically introduced me to running in high school. We ran the Chicago Marathon together last year, and he was on running hiatus after his son was born. Ken has been putting in some secret training over the last couple months and decided to see where his level of fitness was at on Sunday. He ran a very impressive 1:27:59 in his half marathon in Chicago, almost a 2 minute PR, and has decided to make his comeback official by throwing his name into the Chicago Marathon mix with us this fall (previously registered "just in case"). So that makes it an amazing 3 for 3 in PR's by my boys this weekend - Congratulations Shane, Tim, and Ken!!!!!!

The rumors are true, the Ken-Dogg is back!!!

Really quick, for treadmill runners, here is an awesome chart I found online detailing a conversion table with inclines and whatnot. Rule of thumb says to put the treadmill on a 0.1 incline to simulate true outdoor running. With the temperatures starting to get higher, and the humidity beginning to get ridiculous, I have a feeling that treadmill running during the weekdays is going to be more prevalent!!!

Weekend running was ok, still pretty wore down from the lackluster training this week. Saturday, Crystal and I set forth on our long run, neither of us feeling too hot. Was overcast outside, and kind of humid - in the 70's. We did an out and back on the bike trail - didn't feel particularly good starting out. Took a while to get into a rhythm, but finally did in the mid miles. Around the 6th mile, we ran into several groups of runners which lifted the mood, so the pace picked up. At mile 9, made a bad decision to drop pace about 10 seconds and save for a last half mile kick. We should have just kept up the current pace and finished strong that way, since neither of us weren't feeling too hot. Last mile was definitely tough, but we finished nonetheless. Total mileage: 10 - splits were: 8:04, 7:46, 7:47, 7:49, 7:52, 7:48, 7:36, 7:34, 7:43, 7:24 - 1:17:28

Saturday afternoon after the run, ended up playing golf with Pat and a couple other guys over in Alton - weather got pretty humid later on, but was fun to get out and play despite pretty crappy golf shots all around. Ended up getting a great night's sleep after a long day, and felt well rested on Sunday. Went to go see the Hangover with Barrel on Sunday afternoon - absolutely amazing movie, just HILARIOUS! Had a nice dinner with Pat and Crystal (she made yummy pasta - thank you!!!), ping pong and tv afterwards, then attempted my 5 mile pace run at 9 p.m. Weather was kind of cool, but the air was definitely heavy. Never really felt right, was hard to really pace myself at night (difficult to see the Garmin) and I made the mistake of picking a pretty hilly route around town. 2nd and 4th miles were pretty uphill, so struggled through those. Ended up going a little faster than I wanted to (sorry Crystal, I didn't mean to!!!), and legs were pretty tired. Stretched afterwards, fell asleep watching tv pretty fast. Total mileage: ~5 miles - splits were: 7:04, 7:08, 7:00, 7:09, 7:01.

So got about 30 miles this week - supposed to be a light week of running to help recovery from last week's heavy race week, but I feel even more beat up! Joints are a mess this morning, so hobbling around quite a bit. This week, will probably take it easy, just trying to get my legs back. Pretty fatigued from heavy running, and need to get back to 100%.