Last 3 days...

Had a couple of great recovery/tapering runs this week, I have shifted to running my short runs during lunch time, I can just about fit it 3ish miles while not taking too long out of the office. Finishing and getting back to work really makes me feel energized and ready to attack the rest of the day.

So, in the past, I have complained about my pacing issues when I am running by myself. When we have run with the fleet feet crew, our pace leader, Lou, keeps us where we need to be, especially on the long runs so that we do not run out of gas too early. In order to help manage this, I bought myself an early birthday gift (yes, I know, my birthday is in June)...

https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=142&pID=349

And no, I did not pay MSRP, Best Buy had them on sale last week (60% off)...they ran out, but I was able to get a raincheck. Let me tell you, this thing is amazing. I wore it for the first time during my 5k during lunch yesterday. I was able to stay within my zone, watch my pace...make sure my mileage was correct and because I was able to watch my pace, I was able to shave another minute off my 5k time by making sure I was not running too fast out the gate. I think long term, this will be the best investment I make for the next years worth of running. Even after I hooked up the watch to the PC, it broke down each of my intervals and entered them into my runningahead summary...as anybody who knows me knows, I love me some stats and thems are some stats...

We received our corral numbers the other day. We registered so early and honestly we had no idea after 4 months of training how we would do, so of course, I was conservative. Long story short, Mom and I are in corral 30 due to I put our projected finish times as 3:30:00...now, we know now that Mom can walk faster than that. My new projected time should be around 2:50:00, Mom around 3:10:00...Karen was initially projected around 3:00:00, we are thinking she should be done around 2:25:00. Initially I was bummed about our placing, but as one of my bosses said, this gives me a lot of people to pass and thus making me feel like I am one of the Kenyans...at least while I pass the walkers.

Tomorrow is our last Fleet Feet run, it will be a short 6 miles, it sort of sucks because our pace leader Lou will be out, but her husband Byron will be leading us which is great too. We will get our goody bags (from Fleet Feet) and ask any last minute questions before race day.

Next will be an easy week...3 on Tuesday and Thursday, and I am going to take Friday off to go to the Health Expo with Mom and Karen so that we can get our race numbers and probably spend some money on silverneers...To say that I am excited about next week is an understatement, it is probably going to be tough keeping my mind off the race, but I will do my best...