The Good Week

I think that it is safe to say that I am confident in the rest of the year's races and runs. Two weeks since Mt Si and my workouts do have more quality and are alot smarter for sure. I am feeling better overall, but then compared to how I felt before 04/13, anything was an improvement.

The run that I had this weekend with the Balanced Athlete group proved how good things are going.

This long run was a bit different. It was close to 10 miles, but with a twist. Instead of just running 10 total, we ran for about two miles to get to the Ice Centre - the starting spot for the Kent Christmas Rush 5k/10k. Seems that in Kent, the markings for that race are still up on the street and Eric decided to have us do 1 mile intervals with a 1 mile recovery jog on the 10k course. So we would run the even number miles at race pace.

Now, I hadn't run "race pace" in ages since I don't have a pace set in mind for the races I run in. So I figured to make these runs tempo runs that would take me to what felt like I was near red-lining, but not keeling over like last time when I ran head-to-head with Reuben and being left in the dust after a quarter mile.

I was so shocked! Here are my splits for the interval times:

Mile 2 = 8:19
Mile 4 = 8:13
Mile 6 = 7:30!!!!!

Yeah, I focused alot on the last one and did my best to maintain effort. Seems that I found my groove after mile 5.

After we finished up, we had breakfast at Wild Wheat and then I was finally fitted for some new shoes (ran another mile in testing out the footwear). I have to give props to both Asics and Mizuno. They really improved their designs from the previous year and the pains and aches that I was expecting from the newer models didn't happen thanks to modifications in the shoe design and materials used. I decided to go with the Asics Gel-Kayano 14's. It's like running on clouds. My old Mizuno Wave Inspire 3's are now retired to short runs for now until they completely go. Looking forward to trying on the Brooks Cascadia 3's. Figured the Asics can be used on roads and some relatively compacted trails and the Cascadia can be used on trails like Cascade Crest and trail runs on Tiger.

Checking the calendar for the next few weeks, I'm smiling and hopeful for a repeat of the good week again.