red goes to the track

Woo! Had the BEST track workout today! I'm building up my Yasso 800s. I want to be able to do 10 in the weeks before my fall marathon. Today I did 7! My goal pace was 3:18-3:20. I accomplished this nicely.(Fall marathon goal: sub 3:20)

Splits:

• 2 mile warm-up
• 3:11
• 3:15
• 3:18
• 3:21
• 3:19
• 3:17
• 3:16
• 1 mile cool-down

I was pooped when I was done! That 1 mile cool-down was hard. I don't think I could have done another repeat. In a few weeks it'll be time to attempt 8. I have some tempo runs and mile repeats between now and then. I remember when I first started doing these and 5 was hard! It is so cool to be able to see progress!

Tomorrow I tackle that trail that tackled me last week. It'll be the first trail run since my wipe-out. I'm not one to get psyched-out by things like that. I'm sure it'll go fine. My 25K trail run is coming up! This is the race I'm most looking forward to this year. August 15 is coming so soon! Yay!

Gopher the Gold 10K Overall Female. Yaaay!

Ok. Ok. I know I said today's race was not a PR course and I had little expectations. Boy, did I underestimate. It turns out that I not only got a 10K PR but ended up winning the race. It was a nice surprise!

Time was 42:07 (6:48 pace). This was no easy course. It had some nice hills and about 1/3 of it was on trails, though the trails weren't too technical. Since it rained the entire time, the dirt was rather slippery!

Here are some photos:

Me getting my trophy for Overall Female.

Holding up the Finish sign. I thought it was sagging a bit.

Me and Matty pre-race.

My trophy!

Racing means fun.

I'm back! Those bruises still look like monsters but they are no longer send shooting pain up my legs when running. Now they are just ugly! Two days I was out. I'll take it! Not bad at all.

Ran 5.8 miles today in 44:15. It was meant to be an easy run originally, but after two days off my legs just wanted to run fast. ha!

Race tomorrow. Gopher the Gold 10K - raising funds for the Special Olympics. Did this one last year too. It is not a PR course as part of it is on trails. No goals for this race. Not sure what to expect since they changed the course a bit. That means I can't even compare my time from last year. Oh well. It's still a race and racing means fun. :-)

Monster Bruises

I've never had a bruise that has kept me from running before, but the monster bruises I picked up when I wiped out on the trails on Tuesday have me sidelined for the second day in a row. Walking is fine, but the pounding of running is just too much to bear right now. I wonder how long it takes bruises like this to heal enough to allow me to run.

I guess it is cross-training time again. I'll be pretending to be Andy Schleck for a few hours at the gym today on the stationary bike. :-) The weather is pretty crappy anyway. If I can't run, it is a good day to miss. Harry Potter later.

The dangers of trail running become painfully real - ouch!

Wiped out for the first time today. I kept saying my time was coming. Today was it. Clipped a root with my toe and hit the ground hard on the outside of my left thigh and back of my left shoulder. Those are good, padded places to land if you're going down, I guess. Got a nice abrasion and puffy bruise on my thigh about 2 inches in diameter. Doesn't hurt yet - it is still a little numb. Guess I better get some ice on it as soon as I shower all the dirt off my body.

It's funny that the first thing I was concerned about after picking myself off the ground was not the state of my bones, ligaments and tendons. It was getting away from the darned mosquitoes that started to swarm as soon as I stopped (suddenly). The fact that I was able to start running away from the mosquitoes was a good sign, I guess.

I was quite a bit shaken up. It was a hard fall. I started thinking about what would happen if I wasn't able to run away from those mosquitoes. I was probably a mile in by that point. Ah, well, we can't live our lives in fear, can we? Otherwise, we'd all just sit at home all day watching T.V. and begin looking like the average obese American. I WILL NOT EVER become like that. I'll take my chances with the roots and rocks and make sure my husband knows where I am.

Other than the fall, it was a great run! :-)

Though I'm still a bit shaken up.

Trail running rocks. Literally and figuratively.

Distracted by Wildlife

Yesterday during my easy run, I saw a group of these guys scampering along the rocky shore of Stony Creek Lake in the Metropark:

So cute!!!

There were five of them altogether. Must have been a mom and her almost-grown babies. I'm pretty sure they are minks. I've never seen these guys in the wild before and I've lived in Michigan nearly all my life. I stopped in my tracks to watch them for a while.

Perhaps I'll get back to blogging about running soon. I'm kind of caught up in watching the Tour de France lately and reading. I've been reading about running and I picked up a sci-fi novel, Timescape by Gregory Benford. So I just kind of got out of the habit of blogging for a while. Running has been going GREAT lately. Lots of great races, long runs and speed workouts.

Had my best race ever on the 4th of July - the Volkslaufe 20K. I did 1:27:33 (7:03 pace) and got 2nd in my age group (8th overall). So my old 10K pace (7:00) is almost my 20K pace now. Wow! :-)

Later!