High 50s to low 60s F, lovely cloudy day. Objective: endurance, club run, S.C. Hill. Very satisfying run. It was a little far to go on not-quite-recovered legs, but I am willing to pay the price of sitting on the couch the rest of the day. ;) In truth, my legs feel horrible at the moment. Like, almost post-marathon horrible. But they did a great job up until mile 16 or 17, then they had to be forced. Only a week from my half-marathon PR, so I'll take it.
Interesting route today: down the Parkway, to the club meet up at the high school, around the Mill Pond Rd and some other back roads of Snoqualmie I've never seen (never even knew they were there!), back into town (said goodbye to club), up the Spirit Crusher Hill (actually felt slightly easier today!), continued up to and into Deer Park, back down to central area and finally out to The Heights and back home. Dead deer story... At mile 2, going down the Parkway, there was a dead doe in the road. I approached her to make sure she wasn't still alive - she wasn't - and saw her poor body actually dented by the car or truck that hit her. The saddest thing was that her surviving friend was still hanging around, waiting for her in the bushes on the median strip. A police car happened by and stopped to take care of the situation, lights flashing. Even then she still lingered near us. So it is with death among social creatures; the pain goes on in those who are left behind. It was hard to shake that experience off, but running with nice people is good therapy. A very nice 16 y.o. girl joined us today for the first time, and there were 4 of us in my pace group today. Blackberries are starting to come ripe, and the roadsides are covered with them, so I had a little supplemental nutrition from time to time. Yum. Here comes the cavalry! Sean Sundwall is looking at my training plan for the next couple of months and we'll be talking about it tonight or tomorrow. As soon as he said "I like your mileage," I was ready to swear my loyalty. Having someone look at my age and tell me to stop running quite so much is one of my biggest fears about having a coach. I am really looking forward to having some extra guidance. There is definitely something missing from my training, as evidenced by the inconsistency of my race times as I progress to longer distances. For example, as I was telling Sean, my VDOT number (from Daniels Running Formula) is a 39, 37.5 or 36 depending on which of my race times I use, 5K, half-m or marathon. Sir Sean will work all that out for me and help me get that marathon time down where it should be. :D
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