Weekend Half and PB race

the football hall of fame has a 5 mile race they do every year. one of the resa's weasles is the run race director. he runs like 3 min miles and coaches the track team and is all skinny and stuff. well, he said we had to do the race, so we signed up. we were number 60 and 61 of 1600 racers. people all checked out my number and then me. then looked at the number again. they are pretty interested in giving out numbers based on previous years events. so, after looking at the 60 ( which for a small time i had purposefully upside down to show it as 09 ) and then at me they had a "Oh, i am SOOO sorry" look. as if they knew i had gained about 30 pounds over the last year. but hahahaha! they had it backwards! i had lost 30. i was just still 30 pounds heavier than a runner that would have come in 6oth of 1600.

well, there is ten minutes to start and the resa and sheila decide to use the one port-a-pot at the start area. the line was only about 700 people long so we waited in that till the starting gun. we had made it about half way through when it went off. everyone ditched the idea of peeing and just took off. so - now, me too - went in and got happy.

this got us to the start line about 3 minutes after the leaders took off. so they were almost to mile one when we started. not bad really, we have done several races, both running and biking where the winner was already done when we started. the cape argus race in africa had the winners already showered and to the airport before we started. so anyway we are running all by our selves for a few miles. and we start passing people. and... wow. what a difference a year makes. the people we passed were running about 12 min miles and breathing like they had some horrible chest cold. struggling and gurgling. just like we did a year ago. amazing. really brought it home to us how much better we were at running. and! of course the flip side of that coin was how much better we can still get. my nephew mark ran his first marathon in under 3:30. running with him was certainly different. he just sorta plods along at an 7-8 minute pace, talking and looking around. no biggie. well, that was us at 9:20 pace yesterday. we chatted, dodged people, got water 2 times, ran over to a sprinkler to run through. mile 3-4 was up a long slow one mile hill and looking at the splits we did that one at 9:24. ran down the hill to the finish at 9:02 pace and then up the very steep hill at the end. probably the steepest hill in the city - up to the hall of fame front door. finished on my watch at 5.03 miles, 47:27. but it was just a normal jog to us... that was part of the really cool part. that we probably could have done it much faster. but all in all it beats our last 5 mile personal best of 55:19 - 4 years ago.

after the run we headed home for a bagel and then grinded out our half ironman. all went really smooth for everyone, no hurties or mess ups. really it went so smooth i kinda went into another world for most of it. just kinda faded out and when we were done i got some dinner and went to bed. oddly i didnt sleep all that well though, got up about 5 times to pee and had some weird annoying dreams. also really sore this morning. but pretty happy with the weekend!

that was the taper week. the next two weeks are the hardest in the set. we hope to do all of the workouts over the next 14 days. then the book calls for about a 75% week and a 40ish% week. i am going to adjust that downwards - against the book for the first time ever. although we have gone against the book many times in the other direction - especially in the early months. so the adjusting ( as of now ) is going to be more like 50% and then 5% of a normal week. :-D

and here is everyone's favorite video right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJErrp4eOw

we could be riding along and a hill would come up and then... "if this dont make your booty move your booty must be deeeead!!" from at least one person. on one hill The Resa was just in front of me. she turned around and gave me the hard stare and then took off, "ohhh! and Ken has NO ANSWER for this attack!!!", "3 meters of snow, sheila says there is no way. no way you can ride, no way." "Whoes that?"


four to go! 2 hard, 2 easy. and then, well... hopefully 4 weeks from today i am an ironman. if not - well, i will try again.


SCORES!

mentally - 9, hate to say 10 so close to the end here. was more tired than i thought i should have been off the bike yesterday. but it was 90 degrees out.

physically - 9, tired today. good thing it was an easy week! nothing hurts, the hole in my foot is looking pretty good and i have no injuries. just a bit heavier than i want to be at 189. but thats only ( still!!! ) 5 pounds. eating and drinking like maniacs on the bike has us weighing almost more at the end of the bike than the start.

workouts - 9, did them all except i think we lamed out the swim once.


2 hard ones to go!