Day 13.1 - 40 mins - 4.2 miles

Very tough to get out of bed today. Didn't get to sleep until 11, baby woke up at 1 & 4. By the time I finished feeding him at 4:30, it was time for me to get up and get ready for the run. I'm recovering or in the middle of a cold and it was only 37 degrees when I started. I wore a knit hat and gloves it was so cold.

I started at the Y and ran up Williams and merged onto Pulteney. I got to the 4-corners in Painted Post and took a right up Hamilton street and another right onto Platt Ave. I took Platt down to Delaware then then left onto Pulteney back to the Y. I think there was a headwind going out and not going back, but nothing serious. My pace works out to 9:34 which isn't great, but I was down to 217 this morning which means I'm continuing to make progress. I didn't eat much dinner last night (Sunday), refereed 3 games on Saturday, and was up from 11-2 with Brennan on Saturday night so my sluggishness may just be from the exhaustion of a long weekend. I had some yogurt and cereal before the run - I've been eating before the runs lately which is also probably affecting my times and energy. Definitely need to rest up tonight. I'm going to try to up my load to 4 running days per week - 1 long, 1 easy, rest day, hills / speed, easy, rest day. Not sure how that schedule will work with the family, but I am so close to getting so much better!

Day 12.1 - Monday - BFC - 4.4 miles

Didn't hit the road until 8:30am - shorts, no jacket, my blue Nike hat, and a long-sleeve shirt. Really throwing things crazy, I wore my NB sneakers instead of my Asics. I started at the fire dept, went right up Forest, left towards Walmart, and back up the Beartown hills - but not ending at the Fire Department. I then took a left onto Creekside and ran what I thought was a 2-mile route back to the FD, but it ended up being 1.8. I ran the Beartown 2.6 miles in 24:49 and the 1.8 in 17:06 for a total time of 41:55 which is a 9:32 pace. Not bad over 4 miles at this point. I'm dissappointed though because I thought I was running 5 miles. I felt great during the run and was glad to get out there as I'd taken off Saturday AND Sunday.

My left shin was hurting on the inside but it went away when I switched sides of the road and ran WITH traffic. I also spent some extra time warming up doing jumping jacks and lower-leg rotations - something I should definitely continue.

Day 4.5 - Tired, sub 10-min mile

Pretty tired today even though Brennan only woke up twice in the night. Didn't really notice it until I was running and my eyes started tearing. Today was 10 minute runs followed by a 1 minute walk and ending w/ an 8 minute run. I timed & counted laps for each of the 10-minute runs and surprisingly, I ran miles at 9:35, and even faster the 2nd time at 9:30, even though the 2nd run felt like it was taking forever. It was a beautiful day outside and I could have run outdoors if I'd wanted to, but I'll do that tomorrow - it's supposed to rain which is my favorite way to run! The Saucony's were even better this time around and we'll see how they do on the roads tomorrow.

So looking at my 1-mile times, 9:35 per mile equates to a 4 hour & 9 minute marathon time. Remember back in 1993 when I ran 2 miles in 13:45?? That was my best Army time ever. Not sure if I'll ever get close to that again, but at least I'm running. The Boilermaker is 15K which is 9.3 miles so at a 10-minute mile pace that's 90 minutes which is 1.5 hours! Actually, that's about the pace I was running back in 1998 when I was running 8 miles per run in Rome. At least I haven't gotten significantly worse since then :-)