It doesn't get any easier. I just get faster. - Greg Lemond

Wed night we went for a 12 mile run in the park. Used to be a half marathon was something to get all nervous about. Last night i even forgot my knee brace. i have found that if i wear it my knee lasts about 2x as long as when i dont. i dont need the bracing, but the thing keeps my knee warm. and when it gets cold it will lose a lot of strength. not sure if anyone else has this. it might also have something to do with tendons maybe.

well, anyway i forgot the brace. and normally i would have driven back to the house to get it. but we were running a bit late and wanted to beat the sundown. the park is actually an old tow path for horses by a canal. its very pleasant but at night its in the woods and you cant see anything. well, just barely you can see the hole in the woods the path is on, but otherwise you cant see where you are running or if there is a hole or something else on the path.

so we just start running and hope the knee holds out. we ran a pretty fast pace. i dont know if i mentioned before but we are very slow in the run. our bike is respectable, but not our run. but last night we started fast and kept it up. it was great. we ran all the way out to the icecream shop and stopped for 10 minutes and then ran all the way back. 12 miles. and at our personal best ever time too. :-) better than anything we did in africa or in the years before or since. was a great feeling to be running along and my knee was feeling if not strong, at least able to keep me from falling over.

our best ever half marathon was about 2:30ish. which shows how hideously slow we are. this year we did one in about 2:45 and about 2:35. last night if we could have kept the pace up for another mile, which i think we could have, we would have been in at about 2:20. it is flat and no wind or sun and the weather was great. but still. was a wonderful feeling. hopefully we can adopt that pace as our running pace. not sure, but that would be a huge improvement. plus we can use that as a launcher to even better times if that becomes our normal pace. but, more likely we just had a great night.

in other news i am under 200 pounds for the first time in about 2 years.