Man, that's early

So, I'm finding that to fit everything in my day,  I've needed to adjust my definition of a "day". My new "days" start approximately an hour before the old ones, and last just as long. At least I'm running during the grumpiest part of my day, that magical hour after I've woken up where I can find fault with almost anything in the world. And today was not much of an exception, and despite my mood I managed a good mid-week run with even a few hills thrown in. This sunrise special was 5.6 miles with an 8:23min/mile pace:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4560126

Where are all the hills you ask? I packed them in close to the end: 10 hill sprints (more like quick runs), with slow jogs back down for recovery:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=456014

And the knees? They were good [knocking on wood]. Now I just need to add only about 12 more miles of up-hill and I've got the second half of this race beat.

Aggressive

So, devoted fan, I have been waivering back and forth over the course of the past week thinking about whether to follow the Intermediate or Expert schedule for the training program I am using, and I finally decided to just go for it. So, following the sage wisdom that only a generic training printout can bring, I boldy set my sights on the 12 Mile Sunday run for this week. Granted, I need to step up my during-the-week runs a bit, but this would be a psychological victory and would spur me onto pushing myself with this more challenging workout. And I managed to pull in... 11.9 miles. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to get these miles in, it was a solid run and though I was exhausted at the end, I felt pretty good. And I ran it in 1:43:19, making my pace just over 8:40min/mile! But really, I just wanted those last .1 miles. I kept working on gmap to see if I had run just a wee bit farther here, or took that one roundabout a little wider there. But no, it was not meant to be:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4554999

But hey, I can't complain - got some good hills in, a nice milestone in the training routine, and (fingers crossed) my pace should be fast enough to keep me in this race.

CORRECTION: The author would like to apologize to his 2nd fan for the apparent ommission of his name in the first line.

Testing charts!

Ok, the amount of nerdiness will continue to grow as I learn more and more about how to code in html. Right now? Keeping it simple - boom!

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Total
Week 1	--	--	5.3 Miles	--	5.7 Miles	2.9 Miles	8.0 Miles	21.9 Miles
Week 2	--	5.5 Miles	6.8 Miles	--	--	5.6 Miles	11.9 Miles	29.8 Miles

It's a three-fer kind of post

So laziness has slowly crept upon me, as it is wont to do, and so I must cover the tracks for three runs! There is good news here with the maps I'll be attaching - the gmap-pedometer folks awesomely upgraded both their maps and what looks to be their mapping algorithm - sweeeeeet! Now I don't have to laboriously go back over my runs to see what kind of uncertainty to attach to the mileage (yes, I do this), and instead can just point and click away. So enough crushing over the gmap-pedometer upgrades - onto the runs!

The first run (Tues) I don't really even remember, but I can say that I put in 5.5 miles and it was under a 9min/mile pace(?), but ok, it was pretty vanilla and I'm surprised it took as long as it did to totally and utterly forget it:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553191 

My Wednesday run was supposed to be a speed workout, but ended up being a 2 mile extra wandering session through Swiss fields. Note to self: when I see a bunch of swiggly lines for a road map, I should not think "wow, that looks like a really cool flat wooded area"; instead, I really need to tell myself "I bet those are a bunch of really really really big hills". Guess which thought is correct? Yeah, I know that now too. But heck, I warmed up for this with a 10min/mile pace for mile 1, and then ran the rest at about an 8:07min/mile pace, which I'll take any day:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553186 

Today's run was a shorter but still pretty quick run (nothing special), but should help me get my mind ready for tomorrow's 10-12 miler. I ran it at an 8:08min/mile pace, and even threw in a couple of hills:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4553185 

Next up, big run tomorrow. In the immortal words of Samuel Beckett (aka Stephen J. Bartowski, aka Scott Bakula), oh boy.