An easy 4 miler that somehow morphed into a progressive 6 miler. Would have run more, but ran out of time before work. Temperature was almost perfect and the morning breeze made the run a real pleasure.

Splits: 8:06 7:37 7:31 7:26 7:08 6:44 – 6.2 miles in 46 minutes.

Afternoon:

Nice relaxed 2nd run of the day. No Garmin Virtual Partner, but planned to average 7 minute miles for the best part of an hour.

Splits: 7:05 6:53 7:04 6:58 6:56 6:56 6:58 6:54 – 8 miles in 55:47

Humidity much higher than this morning and it looks like it’s going to storm [again].

Feeling pretty good despite 14 Newton miles for the day. Looking forward to the Ed Lowery XC 5k in the morning, but as I posted yesterday, I’m not really expecting anything special. Definitely not a priority race for me….

Splits: 6:55 6:52 6:45 6:52 6:51 6:40 6:45 6:38 6:32 6:29 6:23 6:12 6:09 for a total time of 1:26:10 and average 6:36 per mile pace.

The Newton Gravitas were definitely a huge factor. As I’ve posted before, it’s hard not to run fast in the Newtons. Once you find the sweet spot, there’s no turning back. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever run a faster 13 mile training run….ever!

Also, tonight was the first run with a new Amphipod handheld bottle, The 20oz of melon flavored HEED definitely kept me going. Worked a treat!

Now I’m looking forward to a couple of easy days (and I mean easy!) before Saturday’s CHKD RunWalk for the Kids 8k. My 8k PR is 28:59 (set at the 2006 Neptune Festival) and I think it’s time for a new one. Besides, I rather fancy a celebratory Saturday night Samichlaus….

You may remember on Saturday I posted about the “Tweet 5k” – an online event to benefit Athletes for the Cure which is a program of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Well, surprise, surprise, I found out this morning that my 17:39 from the Run for Independence 5k was good enough to win the weekend competition. My prize? A brand new pair of Newton running shoes! Tremendous news!!

(If you know what Twitter is all about and you’re interested in taking part, be sure to visit the tweet5k web site for more details. The event runs through the end of the month and there are still some great prizes to be won. Of course, you’ll also be supporting a great cause too!)

Back to my run. It took a while to pick up a good GPS signal – probably due to the cloud cover and steady rain – but eventually the black progress bar disappeared and I was able to start running. Compared to my perceived pace, the first mile seemed a little slow (7:43) – in fact, now that I look at the Garmin Connect details, the initial GPS signal wasn’t a good one and it has me starting the run in the water behind the house!

The 2nd mile was a 7:08 and by now I’d settled into a great rhythm in my Newton Gravitas which is the slightly heavier training shoe model. Mile 3 and 4 were very even paced at 6:42 and 6:41 and with the rain now lashing down, I decided to speed up a bit more.

Mile 5 felt great with a steady tailwind pushing me along (6:18) but the sixth mile was tougher as I changed direction and ran into the wind (6:22). The Newtons were performing well and I realized it was the first time I’d worn them in the rain. I had wondered how well the four forefoot lugs would grip the road, but to be honest they handled tremendously. No problems whatsoever.

With a couple of miles to go I decided to maintain pace and stay strong until I got back to the house and with a 6:17 and 6:18 last two miles, finished off the run for eight miles at 6:41 pace – not too bad at all for a Monday run. Most enjoyable!

Hella Sound running music is all-original and uniquely synced to your pace and built to burn calories. Click here to find out how it works. You can customize How To Turn Around A Bad Day to your stride rate using their nifty stride calculator – I chose the 180 steps option.

Anyway, I headed out the door, iPod at the ready, and set off for a 6-8 mile run. Despite a strong, blustery wind, the first four miles were a lot of fun and pretty quick considering the 3 x 5k’s I’d run on the weekend – 7:35, 6:44, 6:25, 6:00 – the Hella Sound music really makes you run fast! Once the 32 minute song was over (the time went oh so fast!), I chilled out for 3 miles, then picked it up in the final mile on the way home – 7:28, 7:28, 7:18, 6:40.

With more songs due for future release, I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the Hella Sound web site – looks like I’ve found a great partner for my tempo runs…

Useful links:
Listen to a preview
How it works
Music and athletic performance
Overview of How To Turn Around A Bad Day
Follow HellaSound on Twitter

On a positive note, I logged 260 miles for the month of September, and as you can see from the graph on the left, it’s the biggest month of the year and the third successive increase.

I wonder if I can maintain the streak and make October another big month?

After a fantastic four days in Vegas, today was my first run since last Thursday afternoon, and it turned out to be more of a struggle than I’d expected. Leading up to the weekend, I felt in fine form and definitely ready to take on another marathon in a couple of weeks time. With three runs of 20 miles and above since my last marathon in the middle of March, I was convinced it was time to taper and start the countdown to Frederick on May 4th.

Despite the lack of running on my Vegas trip, I wasn’t totally lazy and probably covered more miles walking up and down the strip than most people cover in a month. Therefore, I was a little surprised yesterday to feel quite sluggish on my almost 5 mile afternoon run, an put the feeling down to a late night flight, slight dehydration and the constant battle against against the ENE wind. I guess looking back at the GPS stats I didn’t do too badly after all – averaging 6:49 per mile with each mile progressively faster than the previous one.

So, with only 11 days to go until the Frederick Marathon, I’m now facing a bit of a dilemma. Do I continue to taper and risk feeling more and more sluggish as time goes on, or attempt to squeeze in more high quality workouts with the aim of improving my level of fitness. It’s probably too late to do another quality long run (not enough time to recover), but I will be running a final 10k race on Saturday which will hopefully be a good gauge of where I’m at.

Hope everyone’s doing good with their training and moving closer to whatever goals you’re working towards….

Anyway, on to tonight’s run. I planned on running for an hour and with an easy warm up expected to cover about eight miles in the late afternoon sunshine. I’m not quite sure what happened but I ended up running faster than expected and covered the eight miles in exactly 52 minutes – a crazy 6:30 per mile pace, which is roughly where I want to be come Frederick Marathon day. The last couple of miles of the eight were into a headwind and to be honest I was starting to feel quite fatigued towards the end – hence the two mile cool down to finish off the workout which will hopefully help keep any soreness and stiffness at bay.

Looking at my training log since the Shamrock Marathon on March 16th, apart from an easy recovery week of 18 miles, I’ve really put myself through some tough weeks. My legs are definitely feeling the extra miles and extra effort and I’m really looking forward to the marathon taper – I’m not sure how long I can keep this quality training going.

Hopefully I can get my other computer working before the night is over. I’m currently performing a System Restore and the blue progress is slowly ticking along. Fingers crossed….

First time since Sunday I’ve ventured outside for a run, and what a nice run it was too! I’d only planned to run 4 or 5 miles, but with temperatures in the mid-70°s and a nice cooling breeze, it was a perfect afternoon for something a little longer. I ended up running 7 miles, and at the halfway mark started racing against the clock with a goal of averaging 7 minute per mile pace. I’m not sure why every time I run it turns into a time trial, but that’s the way it seems to be at the moment. Could be worse I suppose…

Luckily for me, by six miles I was down to an average 6:59 pace, which meant I could back off the intensity a little and take it easy for the last mile (into the wind) back to the house.

The seven miles takes my weekly total to almost 30, which isn’t bad considering I took Monday off. Tomorrow morning brings another 5k race, but after several tough workouts this week, I’m not expecting any fast times. Actually, it’s the same story as last week, where I’ll be just running through the race with the Frederick Marathon on May 4th being the big goal. If I can get close to last week’s 18:16 I’ll definitely be happy, and a solid warm up/cool down should take my weekly mileage to about 38.

Watch this space for a race update some time tomorrow afternoon….

Have a good weekend and train smart!

Started tonight’s run fairly comfortably, but quickly decided to pick up the pace – all intentions of a steady six mile run soon turned into a goal marathon pace effort for eight miles. I surprised myself towards the end of the workout with a couple of low six minute miles (6:07 and 6:09), and was able to finish off with an average 6:30 per mile pace – not bad considering the 12 mph winds (again!)

That’s all for now. If you want to see my mile splits and the rest of the boring GPS information, just click on the MotionBased map above….

I allowed myself the luxury of a 90 second recovery period after each rep before cooling down and performing 12 minutes of abs/core work.

Not the most challenging workout I’ve ever done, but I wanted to log a few miles without pushing myself too much. Tomorrow I’m planning an early morning six miler before work, and possibly a testing track workout on Saturday.

Yes, you read that correctly – a track workout on Saturday. There are no races to run (unless you count a one mile event at a local school), so for the first time in 12 weeks, I won’t be racing this weekend. Not that I’m addicted to racing or anything, but I wonder how I’ll cope??