Hello August

I've had a pretty good summer thus far. Now I'm feeling a sore tendon/muscle in my upper left thigh. I first noticed it in the last of a 7 mile training run on Tuesday. I felt it on Wednesday morning so I took a day off. This morning (thursday)I didn't even feel a twinge of pain until late in my 7 mile run. Now that I've cooled down and tightened up, I feel significant pain . Hopefully I can manage to heal and still stay in touch with my training. I've made such progress in the last 6 weeks I hate to loose any edge to my fitness. Got to be intelligent here.

Tulsa Duathlon

Went to T-Town this morning to run the 5k distances that sandwich the 30k bike portion of the race, of which my team mate Kevin rode. We finished in 1:24.05 to finish 2nd in the 2 man team competition just 15 or so seconds back from 1st. (There were 6 or 7 teams.)Official splits have not yet been posted, but I think I ran a 17:20 something on my 1st 5k and finished with a low 18 minute something.
My first 5k was run a bit conservative because I wanted to be sure to have enough to race the 2nd 5k.
Before I took off on the final leg, the winners had a 3:05-3:10 headstart. I had calculated that I could afford 2 and a half minutes and still have a shot at winning. I didn't see the leader until I was within 1000 meters of the finish. Basically I had closed pretty well on him but just ran out of course. Maybe I should have been more aggressive. But then again I might have really blown up and lost by a greater margin. But then again, maybe the Easter Bunny would have given me a magical egg if I had gone out faster. In racing ,like anything else, speculation rarely matches reality. You find things out by doing.

UGH 14 miler

Thought I got up early enough (got out the door by 6:10 a.m.), but I still hit a wall around the 9-10 mile mark. Mugginess, combined with lack of any real endurance training as of late made for a real difficult run. Hopefully I will benefit from this effort somewhere down the line.

MOHAWK 5000

Well I did it! With the help of a fast lead pack early then pacing with a familiar competitor (Billy Grona) , I ran a 16:38 to break the existing single age State Record (for a 52 year old) by 12 seconds. An 8 a.m. start helped avoid the heat but the humidity was up. Light winds had no real affect. My splits were good, 3:16,3:18, 3:18,3:21 and 3:22. This is the first National Class time I've run in better than a year. I ran in my old Addidas racing flats which felt lighter and faster than my Brooks. Now it's time to maintain and sharpen just a bit for next months River$ide 5000.
Amy went along reluctantly (early wake-up) and finished 5th in her division with a 26:2?.If she gets motivated she will be awesomer than she already is.

Mid-summer running

Feeling good about how things are coming along. Beat Ron Parks in the Huckleberry run a couple of weeks ago. planning on running the mohawk 5000 this week-end. Hoping to sharpen for several weeks before the river$ide 5000! It would be icing on the cake to break the single -age state record(16:49) before 8/22/08.