14 miles and a cloud of dust.

Well it was a great day for a long run and outdoors to boot. After the morning business meeting and 40 mile drive home, i returned home around 1:00 pm fed myself and the kids lunch of salami or peanut butter sandwiches.

Then i fired up the Garmin, after leaving it on the charger all last night, checked the batteries for the tunes and headed out. Temps were around the mid 30s and sun was shining. Wind blew a little and after two weeks of not running outdoors....

...i started too fast.

At the four mile mark, i was at 31:00 minutes, with a nice showing of my normal one mile warmup and a few sub-8 minute miles. Then i turned into the wind the wheels fell off my plan of having a fun, easy run.

Ugggh, too fast. i ended up at 2:03:00 ish. Somewhere around an average pace of 8:45.

Truthfully, not terrible. in addition to the wind, i had some icy conditions and although i never fell, and only broke stride once, at the 13.1 mile mark to celebrate a 1/2 under my waaaay early training belt, i never had a good stretch going either.

Could it have been a combo of the wind, the ice, the chill and the lack of a good stretch when running on the treadmill?

At least, i have nowhere to go but up, and 13 more weeks of training. It's not like the marathon is in two weeks from today, right???

Another minor bummer. i had to run the 14 miles relatively close to home as Fun Guv was at work. But at least it was not the treradmill. Additionally, i noticed a difference in the fact that when i make long runs going far from the neighborhood, the stoplights seem to provide some excellent recovery breaks. Not much of this happening with a lot less lights and i really felt a difference.

Now on the the first cut-back week of the plan.

and now a favorite bit from a favorite "Woody"




Whew, i made a whole post with no political rants.....

thanks for reading