Foiled by the internets

I was just in the process of trying to write a quick blog post about the Maui Oceanfront Half Marathon, but I was not able to post my (rather expensively purchased) race photos, despite a couple of different efforts. What's up with that? I guess I'll try again tomorrow.

This is the last week before "real" marathon training begins. In preparation, I had a couple of good runs over the weekend. I had deliberately limited my running to two days last week, so that I could run both Saturday and Sunday and take advantage of slightly better whether and more time (without the interference of work!).

On Saturday we were supposed to get sun but instead had heavy fog in the morning that never really fully burned off. Still, it didn't rain. I started out at 7:30 a.m. to do 15-16 miles. About half a mile along, I couldn't remember for sure whether I locked my car door. I was (pretty) sure I did, but I kept picturing the scenario if someone opened the car and took my stuff...so I doubled back to check. It was locked, of course. The extra mile meant a 16-miler for sure.

My goal was to have an average pace of about 10:09 overall. That was pretty ambitious, but I got close! 10:12 in the end, with a very slow warm-up mile (11:18) and a mile up Ingraham (11:01) that doomed my average. I did the first five miles as warm-up...11:18, two at 10:30, 11:01, then 10:40 (that was the end of Ingraham and some rolling hills on Getchell).

I listened to music for the first five miles, then switched to an audiobook when I got to Centennial Trail (Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen). On the trail I did five miles alternating half a mile easy, then half a mile harder. I didn't hit the splits button at the half mile point, but each mile after the first was about 9:40 overall. Once I got off the trail and back on roads I changed to 3/4 mile easy, 1/4 harder. All those miles were about 10:10 or faster. My final full mile was 9:52, which was after I switched back to music on my phone. The total distance was 16.5 miles.

I followed up on Sunday with 10 miles. I really wanted to do 9 miles under 90 minutes, but ended up adding an extra mile and doing 10 miles in 98 minutes. This time my two warm-up miles were faster, 10:40 and 10:15 (or so), then I did mile 3 fast enough to get under 30 minutes for the first three miles (which hasn't happened for quite a while!). Then all I had to do was stay under 10-minute miles for the rest of the distance. Not quite easy-peasy, but it happened!

This left me with just over 39 miles for the week. If I had known in advance maybe I would have done another .7 miles...but maybe not.

We went to my parents' house for the Super Bowl. The food wasn't super crazy but I ate too much. I couldn't stay out of the chips during the game--I was craving salt and carbs! Dinner was a delicious healthy fish stew in a tomato based broth, with yummy brown & serve bread (ate too much of that too). Later we had marionberry pie and coconut cream pie for dessert...I had a little piece of each (as did pretty much everyone).

I'm really excited that I have leftover fish stew for dinner tonight. Luckily I didn't take any of the bread! Or pie!