Quiet Week

Nothing too exciting this week. I was happy to see sunny mornings and warm temps of 60 this week - right up until about mile three of each run. Then my chest would tighten up and the run would become a struggle. I spent the entire week with a knot in my chest and feeling lethargic. I decided to give myself a break on Thursday, so I'd be rested for Friday's 15 mile run with Wendy. I was worried enough that I came up with a plan: I asked Eric to drop me off at the meeting spot so I could call him to come get me if I ran into problems. Lucky for me, Friday morning was gray and cool, and once we were out on the trail, even a bit breezy. Margaret had come to run with us too, and we enjoyed a good 14 miles. We cut it a bit short so everyone would have plenty of time to make it in to work.

I didn't run yesterday, instead I went to what I'm not-so-fondly referring to as "the meeting from hell". (Having to do with a side project I've taken on, and may regret...) Today I ran 9.5 miles at a fairly quick pace - for me anyway: 11:20, including walk breaks. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but recently I've pulled off some five mile runs with an average pace of less than 10:30, again, including walk breaks. I'm getting faster, but certainly can't sustain it over the long distance.

I got a new pair of shoes last week. I bought my last pair on February 15th, and I started thinking that my shoes weren't lasting me very long. I can always tell when it's time for a new pair because my feet begin to hurt. They actually began to hurt a few weeks ago, but I was trying to stretch out the usage. Once I finally got the new ones, I sat down to see what the deal was. I knew I had run a 50K, a 100K and three marathons in those shoes. Well, I was surprised to discover that I'd run 580 miles since February 15. I figured about 40 of those miles were done in my trail shoes, so 540 miles were on the old shoes - in about 3.5 months. That falls right into the 500 mile range that the shoe manufacturers cite. Don't they usually say 6 months or 500 miles? It also explains why I'm buying shoes every three months. Too bad I'm not faster so Asics would sponsor me and send me shoes!

That's it. A quiet week, a post without pictures, a report without a race. Might be that way for a while, as I'm actually trying to behave myself this summer and stick to my promise of not running summer marathons and ultras. After the Seattle Rock-n-Roll at the end of the month, my next one will be Michelle's Grande Ass in September. That's right - we've brought back our popular Starbucks-to-Starbucks marathon. We are limiting the field to 50 runners and we already have 30 signed up! Let me know if you want in...I know the RD quite well!