Memorial Day - Remember our veterans

Rain and repeats

Woke to rain on the back deck when I let the dogs out this morning. The radar showed the showers moving eastward. Yet, on the way to meet the fella's at Greenland, it sprinkled rain, poured rain and stopped raining. BLEAH. Big crowd to start, eight of us total. Biggest group ever for a 4:30 training run? We broke into two groups, the fast guys went out for some kind of tempo workout and the rest of us headed out for 5 x 3:00 with a 1:30 recovery.

Today's workout was BQ1's from some kind of McMillan 10k plan. He planned on running 5k pace, I was thinking more of 10k pace. My plan was to go out at my pace and try to speed up at the end. Worked out pretty well. BQ1 would blast off and I'd chase, and never quite catch him. Always about 10 seconds back. Far better than the last couple of workouts where I went out at his pace and caved in the last half of the repeat.

Best part of the workout was that it was pain free! All of my little aches and pains didn't show up today. Don't know what's going on with that. Last couple of workouts have been better. So, perhaps everything is starting to come together. Sure hope so.

Nasty cut on Lance Armstrong from yesterday's crash, 13 miles into stage 5 of the Tour of California. Good news, nothing broken, but the cut below his eye required 8 stitches. Floyd Landis crawled out of his hole, to accuse everyone around Lance of doping and to change his story as well. This kind of crap really gets the forums all jazzed up, sort of entertaining but just more of the same old same old.

negative

Queen of the house

Haven't updated the blog in quite some time. Not that I don't have anything to say. Plenty on my mind, but this is predominately a running blog. Sure don't want to weigh it down with my current situation. (though the guys I run with do get the benefit/drudgery of listening to my whining) But, it's easy to see how things can change one's perspective. Take all of the recent flooding in the middle Tennessee area. Incredible, loss of life, home, livelihood, and even sense of well being.

Training has been stuck in a rut lately. Felt like I had a hernia since late last year. Still haven't figured out what's going on. Been to the doctor twice and ruled out a hernia. Speed workouts have almost been stuck in third or fourth gear. Just can't seem to upshift to that final gear.

Went to the golf course this morning and it felt good to be on the grass. Time to put that back in to the training mix. I'll have to do those workouts by myself. Just seems better slogging along really slow and not risk stepping in a hole, until the sun comes up. Then it feels great to open up the stride, somewhat and push the pace slightly. Still slow enough to be a recovery run.