Fresh Legs

It really is wondrous what a couple of good nights sleep and a day off will do for both your mental spirit and the bounce in your legs. The past couple of weeks have been tough due to my work schedule, deadlines for reports, meetings and then presentations and review of said reports before the usual critical audience. Enough about that, it's over and done with, no excuses and it went better than expected.

I'm now back to my usual 8 hours and in fact woke up this morning after 9 hours of solid sleep but with some soreness in my hams, maybe from too much lying around? This worried me at first because my rearranged schedule called for Pfitzinger's famous final speed workout of 8 miles with 3x1mile at 5k pace with 2:oo jog rests. Given that I haven't raced since last fall (Moncton 10k in 43:34 which predicts a 20:54 5k) or done a 5k since Sept 2007 (Fredericton Fall Classic in 20:31), it's hard to know if I'm meeting the standard or not. OK, just run hard but not to crazy so as not to hurt yourself and see what happens.

It went very well! I did get a dissaproving look from 'Coach' for running in shorts with overcast/cloudy, windy conditions at +3C and a the occasional snow flake but a pair of light gloves more than made up for it. After a nice easy warmup and some stretching I was off to the races, starting at mile 0 of our St. Andrews Father's Day race route which was calibrated with mile marks last spring. First mile in 6:42 and low average heartrate of below 90% but the fresh legs, tailwind, and slight downhill helped push me along. After a 2:00 jog it was off in the opposite direction and this time the headwind, slightly tired legs and uphill made me work much harder for less in results (7:02 split). The 2:00 jog break was not long enough this time and the beginning of the next mile was lactic hell until I was able to get into a nice rythm as the wind and slight hill gave me a break. Able to manage a 6:49 this time and all that was left was an easy jog back home. Great run, nice to pick up the pace but feeling it a bit in the aftermath (MUST REMEMBER TO STRETCH AND DO MY EXERCISES!)


Meanwhile the countdown is on in earnest and we now have our 1st forecast from 10 days out!

You can't predict the day but at least the trend of temperatures around that weekend looks good, not too hot and no nor-easter's predicted which is just what we want. A low spectator index is good because not perfect spectator numbers often translate to nice running conditions. Let's hope! Have a good weekend or what's left of it!