Another week down

Another pretty good running week in the books. Not so good football wise as the Seahawks blew a big one. I know, they can't win em all, but my life would sure be easier if they did. Anyhow, back to running, here's how it shook out:

Sunday - Rest, watched/listened to football (which is sometimes a workout in itself)

Monday - 7 miles with 8x100m strides. Felt good.

Tuesday - 12.1 miles. Felt good.

Wednesday - 5 miles. First run in my new Mizuno Waver Rider 10s. Felt good (do you see a trend here?).

Thursday - 9 miles including 7x800m speedwork. First time I've done speedwork since sometime before the Missoula Marathon in July. I could definitely tell. I won't say that it felt good, because speedwork isn't supposed to feel good. It's supposed to hurt like hell and it did. For those who don't know, 800m intervals are sometimes used to predict a marathon time. You run a bunch of em (usually 8) then take the average of your time and for some people it translates to the time you can run a marathon. Make sense? Probably not....for example, my average time for the 7 intervals was 3 minutes and 25 seconds, which would translate to a 3 hour and 25 minute marathon. My goal for Crazy Horse is 3:30, so lookin good. Of course, it's just an estimate...

Friday - 5 miles with 6x100m strides. Felt good.

Saturday - 16 miles. Started out feeling great, hit a rough patch around 12 miles but then the last 3 miles felt great again. Finished strong, but as soon as I stopped I realized that I was really frickin tired and was pretty sore for the rest of the day.

Total - 54.1 miles

So, only three weeks to go until the Crazy Horse Marathon but I have two possible races coming up before then. This Saturday there's a 5k in Sturgis where I had hoped to break 20 minutes for the first time, but I've discovered that the course is not friendly (i.e. uphill for the first half). So, now I'm not sure if I'll even run it. Next Saturday is a 5-mile trail race in Spearfish. I probably would have won this race easily last year (when it was a 4-miler), but I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up tacking an extra 2 miles onto the course (along with the guy who I had just passed for the lead). Ended up finishing second to last. I'm definitely running this one...some redemption is in store.