At long last spring

Well, for a few days, anyhow! This picture is actually from Wednesday afternoon, when I went for a walk after work. The weather has finally stopped terrorizing us and been fairly balmy and even sunny at times.

Speaking of Wednesday, on Wednesday morning I did Yasso 800's as called for by my newly revised schedule (biweekly 800's). That meant 7 x 800. After 3.25 miles warmup, I hit the track. The first two were disappointing--I couldn't get under 4:00. But the next one was 3:59 and then I stayed in the mid to low 3:50's until #7. That one was 3:48! Woohoo! About 7:35 pace. I continued my music experiment by shutting off the iPod for the final two. I do seem to be faster without it. But I just don't know if I could get through multiple 800's without music.

This morning I went out late (like 9 a.m., hangs head) for a 12-mile run. I was supposed to do just four miles at marathon pace (easy enough) but I got a wild hair and decided to do a progressive pace run instead. My (highly optimistic) goal was two miles each at 10, 9:30, 9:00, 8:30, and 8:00. Or thereabouts.

Well, if you give a generous interpretation to "thereabouts," I did...okay. Basically I missed each pace by about 15 seconds (until the final FAIL on mile 10). At least I manage to pick up the pace. The first two miles were about 10:15, then two around 9:37, then 9:11 and 9:15, then two at about 8:45, then finally, mile 9 at 8:15 and mile at (oops) 8:30. (Then I did the final two miles slowly. Total 12.25 miles.)

The reason for my effort was because yesterday I had loose lips and mentioned my hope to run the Bloomsday 12K "as close to one hour as possible." One hour would require an average pace of 8 minutes per mile. Gulp. Well, I did say "as close as possible"!

Good luck to all the runners this weekend, particularly the Boston runners on Monday, and especially my friend Annie who is running Boston for the second time and qualified before she got into the 45-year-old age group!

Happy weekend everyone!
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