Everything You Didn't Want to Know About My Runs

I was just going to take it easy, but I picked up someone to chase at Newcastle and Highland.  She came up the hill on the other side of Highland while I was waiting at the light and ended up running mostly the same route as me.  She was going pretty fast, so it was hard to catch her.  I was finally catching up at the top of the hill when she took a shortcut through the elementary school and headed down Newcastle.  I took the long way to Newcastle and started chasing again.  I finally passed her just before the light at Highland.  That was probably faster than I should have run, but it is always good to have someone to chase.

Eight miles chasing Stacie without being able to catch her.  She was booking it.  I'm not sure who is going to cross the finish line at St. George first.  Last mile was under 9 minutes.

It dawned on me towards the end of the run that my legs are not nearly as dead as they were the week after my first 20-miler.  

Slow, easy five miles.

4 miles in 35 minutes--which was my goal.  Pulled Stacie along for the first 2 miles and then, in a moment of weakness at the top of the hill, she flew by me and I had to chase her all the way down.  I might have caught her, but she stranded me at a red light.

A beautiful morning for a run.  I got out a little late this morning.  I picked up a cold last weekend after getting up so early to run.  It hasn't been that bad, but the effects are kind of still lingering around.  I tried to sleep in if I could.  Stacie didn't get out with me--she went later.  I could have used her at the end, but it was still a pretty good run.

 I've done this route, or something very similar, four times now and I thought it would be interesting to see how I did.  I guess I should go read the blog entries for these runs.  My fastest time was the first time I ran it: July 30.  Time was 1:57:36.  My second fastest time was 1:59:17 about a month ago: Aug 20.  Both of these were before the blood donation.

Today I ran it in 1:59:22, which beat my time from two weeks ago by 22 seconds.  Two weeks ago was the day Stacie and I raced the last couple of miles.  My 8:22 final mile is still the fastest mile from any of these runs.  This was good, because the run felt a little slower than two weeks ago--yet it wasn't.  I was thinking that I needed the race at the end, but it turned out I didn't.  This was also the day after a four mile pace run--which was the only one with a run day prior.  I went biking on the first run.  The other two followed rest days.  Bottom line, apart from the lower red blood cell count, I'm in better shape and might be ready to run this marathon in two weeks.  I'm looking forward to an easy week next week.