Not a bad week

This hasn't been a bad week for running, well compared to last week anyway. Thanks to another thunderstorm, I missed my run yesterday. I'm hoping to still get it in today, it's supposed to be a 8K tempo. On Tuesday night, I did 5x1000 repeats and I was happy with each of them, considering it is my first series of speed drills in a long time. I kept them all under four minutes, between 3:46 and 3:58. I did an extremely easy Wednesday night, 6K run. I'm not quite where I need to be on my marathon training program, but I'm getting back up there. I'm refusing to push it too hard and get myself injured. My plan at this point is to run all of the lower distances at the speed and distances called for in my program, but I'm not going to do the LSDs. This week my schedule calls for 20 miles, I'll be lucky to log 20K. But it's progress.

8K in the books

Check it out, two consecutive days of morning runs. This is absolutely amazing. At 5:10, Elle started making noises and woke me out of a dead sleep. I got up, checked to see that she was asleep and glanced at the alarm clock in her room. I scratched my head, contemplated the pros and cons of heading back to bed for 15 minutes and decided to forgo any fruitless efforts at sleep and get suited up for a run. My recently adopted marathon training program called for  5-mile (8K, I hate the old imperial system) run.

The weather this morning was not nearly as nice as yesterday, there was a chill and I thought I might experience a small drizzle when I started. But the best part of my run was the fact that I took it out of the neighbourhood and onto the trail. I cannot describe how beautiful it is to watch the sun rise over the Saint John River. Seeing that unmistakable orange tinge blanketing the sky, hearing those few morning birds chirping merrily and the crunch of my shoes hitting the ground. It's exhilarating I've always been amazed at my bizarre capacity to smell dew. Of course, I realize that water doesn't have a smell, but there is just this overwhelming scent of freshness at that early part of the morning.

Alas the run. It was fine. The schedule said to keep it easy. I'm still having trouble with that because my mind really wants to make up for all my lost training. I wanted to keep each split to 4:20 min/K. I did that within plus-minus three seconds for six kilometres, my warm up kilometre was eight seconds slower and my final kilometre was nine seconds faster. I forgot my time but it was pretty darn close to a straight, 8K, 4:20 min/K pace. So you can do the math faster than I. According to my schedule, I should have been running 4:40s.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Morning run

Yes, those of you faithful readers to my, recently, unfaithful running blog will notice that I just wrote "morning run." This is the first time in almost a year that I have woken up, laced up the Asics and went for my run before 5:30 a.m. I miss morning runs even more than I miss the West Wing and how I'm about to miss Studio 60. With Izzie sleeping a lot better these days, I'm hoping this will become less noteworthy as I do more and more early morning runs.

Before I get too far along in this blog, I have to say. What is up with all those mosquitoes? Just before I started my run, I noticed that my laces weren't done up through the final series of holes, so I stopped, took off one shoe and as I was fixing my laces, I was absolutely dive bombed by these famished insects. We're talking shock-and-awe mosquito tactics. It was absolutely insane. Anyone know of tricks to test for West Nile?

Once I salvaged my exposed skin from those unwarranted attacks, I trotted out for a quick 5K run. It was my first run in almost two weeks, so I didn't want to push too much. I realize that I need to stop running 5K loops or else my overall fitness isn't going to get back to where it was in March. I finished in, roughly, 20:30. I had some slow middle Ks, but I brought the last 1,000m home in 3:50, which felt good. I'm not sure when the last time I posted a 3:50 min/K.

I'm sitting in the office now, about to put out my calls and I have to say, I feel great. Let's hope this continues.