The upside of taking an unintentional four-day break from running is that I felt pretty good last night when I got back out there. Steeeve suggested 4 miles — 1 warmup, 2 at 11:00 pace, and 1 cooldown. I tried to comply, but ended up going faster because I felt pretty darn good. I did the 4 miles in 42:56.
Mile 1 – 10:55
Mile 2 – 10:43 (into the wind, some light drizzle)
Mile 3 – 10:07 (wind at my back, drizzle stopped)
Mile 4 – 11:11
Even in the 3rd mile, I felt fairly comfortable. Last night, 10:10 pace is something I felt like I could have maintained over at least a 5K distance, assuming I did a good warmup.
I updated my sidebar with a list of upcoming races that I’m planning to do, and only then did I realize how packed my spring is:
January 14 – Houston Half Marathon
February 10 – Surfside Half Marathon
March 4 – Little Rock Half Marathon (BIG maybe)
March 17 – Seabrook Lucky Trails Half Marathon
April 1 – Lone Star Half Ironman Triathlon
April 14 – Charlotte (NC) Racefest Half Marathon with my sister
Buzz asked if I wanted to do Austin; I can’t because I’ll be skiing. Gavin has thrown out the idea of doing Little Rock on March 4 (his sister lives there and he says the course is really nice), but we don’t have solid plans yet.
I won’t be racing all of these all-out; some are just a way of me getting in a fun training run, since I need to maintain/improve my 13.1-mile level of fitness until the Half Ironman comes and goes. And obviously I won’t be focusing entirely on running after January 14. My priorities are 1) finishing Houston in style, 2) finishing the Half Ironman, period (under their 8.5 hour time limit), and 3) having fun in Charlotte running with my sister as she does her first half marathon.
My presense at Seabrook is up in the air, since STS-117 is currently scheduled to launch that day, but I’m hoping to do it.
And then I think “heck, if I actually do all of those races, I’ll have done 5 half marathons in 4 months…might as well keep going and do Love the Half!” (Although I’m not quite sure what the advantage to signing up for that program is; seems like you’re paying a fairly high registration fee just to get a finisher’s prize and your name on a website.)
We’ll see. That schedule is/will/would be far more ambitious than anything I’ve done before, and yet it’s happened almost by accident. We’ll just see…