Two a day, but not running

I ended up only running once today. There was too much that needed to get done this morning for me to run, wait and then run again. But I am posting twice! Yesterday I covered 6 miles with a run that started in neighborhood #4 and then moved along to neighborhood #2 before I did a few loops within my own neighborhood. Today I set out for a run around the perimeter of my neighborhood, first tracking west along Jericho Turnpike and then south on the main road that borders us to the west. It was a fast run and I covered 4.25 miles at 8:58. Both runs this weekend totaled about 10.25 miles and my average pace overall was under 9:00. I am pretty happy about that since I'm in the final weeks of training prior to my marathon relay.

The cooler weather definitely helps my effort. My Runner's World co-bloggers have convinced me that a hot and sweaty run of the same distance and speed of a cool and dry run is more work. That means I need to up my game as fall progresses and not accept the status quo of summer performance metrics. I purposely looked for challenging elevations today in anticipation of what the marathon website calls "memorable hills." This morning there was a segment on the news about the ING half marathon and they had a sports doctor who was promoting plyometrics as a training technique. I tried a few activities in my den until my son pointed to the mini trampoline that was sitting a couple of feet away. Sometimes I miss the obvious. I'll try to incorporate that into my training as well. I'm looking forward to continued coolness for my morning runs although you'd never know it was fall today with temperatures hitting 76 degrees.