Here Comes The Sun

Another easy run today, this time with Jan and Frank. We cruised an easy 7 miles and had a grand time. Somewhere around 9:50/mile, including a water stop at Mopac. I felt really stiff and clunky at the start of this one, but by the end of it, I felt nice and smooth, which is the idea. I had tweaked my hip yesterday getting a little too aggressive with a different stretch, and was worried that I had really messed something up, but that seems to have worked itself out.

I stretched (more carefully today!) afterwards, and got a chance to talk with Pete for the first time in quite a while. Plus, Shannon and Alex stopped by after their workout for a few words. The weather was spectacular, bright and clear once the sun came up, and temps in the high 30's. Just a nice day to be out there.

Frank and I were musing about the fact that it wasn't long ago that our 10K target pace would have been at or slower than our 3M half marathon pace, which made us very happy and grateful. It's really cool that all of the training is coming together like it's supposed to.

Today I finished off the month's running, of course, and I scored 197 miles, a new record. Now, the taper continues downhill to the marathon. We'll keep up our intensity on the speedwork, including 1000m track repeats and 800m track repeats next week, but I'll gradually slim down the recovery runs, and the long runs get shorter. The very last week, the week of the race, we do a modest speedwork deal on Monday, and then it's rest and/or easy running no more than 30 minutes until Freescale. Time to focus.