Catching up...

"This blog SUCKS!" -bciii

I know, I know. This is why I don't like new year's resolutions! However, I haven't run in a race since January. I have one next weekend, so I'll post the report & uphold my resolution!

January was "Loop the Lake," a 5 mile run around one of the playa lakes here in West Texas. My mile splits are as follows: 1 - 7:23.272 - 6:46.163 - 7:52.114 - 7:31.465 - 7:08.74 for a total of 36:36 according to the race timers. I felt really awesome that day and these were my results compared to the field: 15/83 overall, 2/30 women, 1/1 age group. Yay! First out of 1!

My next race is this weekend. This is the Prairie Dog Runs 4 miler and I'm really looking forward to this race. This was the first race I ran in with my club last year, so this is my anniversary race. I am not planning on racing, however, because my marathon is only 2 weeks later!

Which brings me to my next point. I have been running A LOT lately & I had one of the best and hardest runs ever this past Saturday. I have run 465 miles year to date. This week is the start of my taper before the marathon, and I am really looking forward to it.

Saturday I ran 18.4 miles. I met with a few members of my running 'group' at 6 to run a few before the rest of the group showed up. We ran 6.2 miles with about 3 of them at close to 8 min pace. We got back to the group at 7 and there were seventeen people! A new record! Jerry says, "Okay, we're going to split into two groups. My group will run close to 8 min pace. Amanda, are you coming with us?" So I begrudgingly followed. I was one woman among 5 men where only 2 of them had run the hour before we met the group. We ran 10 miles close to 8 min pace (or faster), and a total of approximately 12 mi at 8:19 average pace. I was really hurting after this run, but I think it's given me a lot of confidence. I averaged faster than my goal pace for the marathon in a hard run after having run 43 miles over the 5 days before the long run. Maybe the marathon won't even be as hard as this run! We'll see. I'll be posting soon with my Prairie Dog race report.