The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

Knee really hurt this morning and with two totally different opinions on it I'm just going to run as much as I can each day, stay off hills, and be happy with what I get.

AM- 8.6 miles easy.  Sunny and 75 degrees.  Spring is awesome!

PM- early afternoon 8X1mile repeats marathon pace, cool down and warm up miles.

Bittersweet day first with the great women's race at Boston and the incredible three masters under 2:20, then the senseless bombing.  Nuts.

6.5 run at 7 min pace in morning

7.25afternoon with some 400sr 

8 miles in the morning just freezing my butt off after getting the kids to school.  10 in the evening on the treadmill.  All I could take.

Today I did my first track workout in a long time.  Kind of an intro one so I would not hurt myself.  I vertical taped the knee pretty good so I would not have any movement side to side.  I went to the Nelson Fieldhouse at USU which was built the same year I was born.  I love the old atmosphere in that place and the old memories that it brings back.  I ran my first college meet there.  It reminded me of my experience again going from High School to College athletics.  I joined the High School team two weeks into the season in my senior year and decided there was nobody I couldn't keep up with.  I was a cocky little sucker when I walked onto college campus with a track and field scholarship.  I quickly found out that everybody was faster than me.  Welcome to the real world.  

Lots of talent, and I would have to work my butt off to even hold the back of the pack.  I didn't even know at first if I could even run with those guys. 

The fieldhouse is one of the few places left that has not changed at all.  Old lead glass windows, the same lockers I used 22 years ago, same pigeons in the rafters.  Neat to imagine all the feet that chased dreams around this rubber track.  Love the place.  USU has built all around that old building.  Did 4 mile warm up, pyramid speed work.  8X200, 6X400, 4X800, 4X100. 3 mile easy jog. 

Ran 3.5 this evening very easy for a shake out run.  I always seem to get through workouts better, long or hard ones, if I do an easy run that evening. 

As a side note of interest, Lee Troop, who BTW is Jason Hartmans coach, ran a 2:17 in Boston Monday.  He's a three time Olympian although his Olympic runs have been some of his biggest disapointments.  Now that he's a Master we will be seeing more of him.  But he's still an Australian even though he lives in Mecca (Boulder).  Anyways, it's interesting to me that he is my height, 5'10 1/2" inches but weighs 116 lbs.  Yep, he weighs over 40 pounds less than I do.  

Easy recovery run.  It was 21 degrees this morning in Logan.  I'm spending 45 minutes each day on rehab with the knee which feels like an incredible waste of time.  At least I'm catching up on movies I've missed.

Nice run in the light rain.  I think I feel good enough for a race tomorrow.  Probably the Half Marathon because it makes the most sense with my training, or lack of it.

First race of the year!  I was pretty worried about this race today considering a lack of training followed by this last good week of hard running.  I also didn't know how the knee would hold out.  Turns out it only hurt a bit during the race but I'm paying for it right now.

We stopped by Rob's to say Hi and of course my girls just wanted to stay with them for the night so Rob was awesome in taking them in for the night.  I got up to the race early and changed my bib over to the half since the entry that they gave me last year was for the full.  No way that I was going to run a full today even though the prediction was nobody wanted to run it.  That turned out to be wrong since a great field showed up for the full too.  I had a great time just being back into the running for the first 4 miles.  5:20, 5:27, 5:34, 5:28.  It appeared that the leaders were doing under 5 for some of those miles.  I was holding a pretty strong goal of running at sixes so I eased off a bit and just got in some miles.  I was completely freezing by now, hands numb.  I ran the last three miles at around 6:45 pace and was pretty happy that I felt no bad effects of jumping back into running again.  Good run for me, now it's time to continue with some training.

One clear impression from racing today is how fast you actually have to go when you want to run a Half Marathon in 1:10-1:15.  It's easy to forget when you are not training fast that you cannot race fast, or what kind of fitness it takes for that speed.  My imagination is always faster than my fitness.  One of the best things about running is that you have to walk the talk eventually.

It's cool to be out with guys that train so hard and run so well.  Hats off to those guys who ran that course today under 1:10.  It's certainly not as fast as the old half course was.