Dear legs: Good job, but don't get overconfident

With all this whining about my bad haircut, I have forgotten to write about my run Thursday morning.

 

It was fast. It was crazy. It was fast. Did I say fast?

 

And it came from out of nowhere.

 

I went to bed Wednesday night with a bad cold and a badder (Warning - ICKY grammar alert) stomach from Bar-B-Que and greasy fries. I woke up Thursday morning with a stuffy head and an overactive bladder and thought about just skipping my Thursday run altogether. Afterall, I'm beginning a mini-taper for the Feb. 28 Cowtown Marathon, so nothing I do in these final weeks will help me for that day, right???

 

Well, anybody who knows runners knows that runners are more likely to run when sick than go to work when sick. So I put on my clothes, hit the bathroom, and drove to the Lukes Locker on University for the normal group run that takes us on hills through TCU and the Colonial Country Club.

 

Now again, I'm still feeling a little foggy-headed, but there were more than a dozen other runners. And when I run with other runners, I get this crazy rush of Adrenaline and if Im not careful, an easy run can turn into a tempo run and a tempo run can turn into near race pace for me.

 

I tried to be careful. I really did. But for the first few miles, there were a few people in front of me and so I played this game in my head of "catch that guy." And by Mile 4, I had caught everybody and passed them. It was a comfortably hard pace, and not to steal a line from this Northwest blogger/runner/extraordinarily fast person, it was so fast that I was scared to look at my watch; didnt want to do anything other than run and breath.

 

Here are the splits from the run

 

1 - 8:13 (warm-up)

2 - 7:22

3 - 6:57

4 - 6:40

5 - 6:27

6 - 6:23

 

That's 6 miles in 42:01, a 7:00/mile pace for the entire run, and 6:36 over the last four miles. I've got a 16-miler coming up Saturday morning, so I've told my legs not to start bragging and getting overconfident. I plan to warm up the first 6 miles and try the last 10 in 8:00/mile pace or better. That'll end my week at 46 miles and then I'll have two more taper weeks before Cowtown.