Racing season

I'll start this post with a shout out to Adventure Girl who ran the NYRR 10K Scotland Run in Central Park on Saturday. Despite the driving rain and cold temperature she ran a strong race at an impressive pace. She told me that the energy that came from running with such a big crowd (over 7,600 finishers) helped her performance. Considering that (until recently) she was away from running for months recovering for a soccer injury I think this is a great return to competition.

I'm in my final week leading up to my 4 mile race and I've tried to get some mileage in before the work week. This week will be mostly travel so I'm not sure how much street running I'll get to do. Yesterday afternoon my wife and I decided to do a second workout. Although I did some tempo runs that morning I didn't feel as though I had taken enough time to work on endurance. My wife did a second elliptical workout as I ran on the treadmill. I didn't want to overdo it so I kept it to two miles with an overall pace of 8:51.

Today we all went to the track. It was busier than I would have expected since it's Easter Sunday. My kids did a little running and a lot of playing. There were a few serious runner types doing tempo runs and they all passed me very quickly. A number of runners came and went while I did my 4 miles. I may not have matched their pace but I outlasted them all. My intention was not to run fast and I paid no attention to my pace. I ended up running 4 miles at a mid-9 pace and I felt good that I could cruise at that speed even with stiff headwinds over half the track.

I am planning to do a light elliptical workout tomorrow and then possibly one more long run before my race. 6 days and 17 hours to go.