Running: street, trail and marathon

Today's run: 5 miles (street) plus 1 mile (Stillwell Woods)

It was all about running today. NBC's coverage of the NYC Marathon started at 6 AM and we watched just about all of it. I was very pleased that Shalane Flanagan took second place in the woman's race and that she also won the US Marathon championship. She's a great competitor and she ran a great race. The men's race was disappointing with Haile Gebrselassie dropping out around mile 16 and Meb Keflezighi, Dathan Ritzenhein, Tim Nelson and Jorge Torres all missing podium spots although Keflezighi and Ritzenhein both finished in the top ten. It was fun to spend the morning following the race. The athlete tracking service that allowed you to follow friends along the race failed so I couldn't keep current with marathoners FS and James. I did manage to see FS through the 5K checkpoint and James through 10K before the system went down.

Before the start of the race I went out for 5 easy miles. It was 37 degrees and sunny at 8:00 AM and I couldn't have asked for better conditions. I purposely started slowly and picked up the pace after one mile. I toggled between brisk and easy paces throughout the run and I was close to home when I reached the 4 mile mark. Instead of heading to my house I decided to extend the run and added a mile to make it a tidy 5. After lunch we headed for Stillwell Woods and me and my daughter ran a loop on the dirt trail around the big field. We encountered a couple of dogs running off leash that made my daughter very uncomfortable. I strongly suggested to the dog's owner that he leash the dogs or at least teach them to stay away from people they don't know. He apologized and in truth his dogs were only playing but it's not right to assume everyone has a comfort with dogs. Hopefully he'll consider more training.

It's been a great weekend. The extra hour from Daylight Savings Time certainly helped make today a full day.