Tempo day – First of 2 good runs in St. Louis + Fuzzy death
Traveling can be tough on a training schedule. But, with family visiting St. Louis from California, Georgia, and New York for my Grandma’s 94th birthday, I figured I’d do what I could on the training front, hoping not to get too much off track. As it turned out, I was able to get in both of my scheduled runs and both went well.
Sometimes I just set a workout to see how I get through it. I expected this one to push me, as every Thursday session is supposed to. The goal for this one is an easy warm-up, with steady acceleration until I’m going about as hard as I can for a few minutes. Here’s what I knocked out, on a treadmill:
(Second number is miles per hour)
1M @ 6.7
1M @ 7.0
1M @ 7.5 (pace I ran 2010 Austin Marathon)
1M @ 8.1 (roughly goal marathon pace)
0.25M @ 8.3
0.25M @ 8.5
0.25M @ 8.7
0.25M @ 8.9
0.25M @ 9.1
0.25M @ 9.3
1.5M @ 7.5
So, 7 miles total with a good mile and a half faster than marathon goal pace. Though the last couple quarter mile stretches were hard work, I finished feeling good, knowing there was still plenty left.
In completely unrelated news, Sagan dragged me down to Grandma’s basement for a bit of exploring. It is unfinished, as are many basements across the Midwest. Kind of musty, concrete slab, exposed rafters and conduit, entirely utilitarian, mostly for storage and laundry. As I walked around taking in the sights and smells, which aren’t exactly pleasant but remain full of nostalgia, I felt something soft crunch underfoot. Sagan and I were equally giddy with the source – one of two dead but reasonably well preserved baby mice. We did the logical thing in putting them in a decades-old Band-Aid box, for presentation first to Alison, then to Jason after we returned to his house. The next steps were unclear, as the dead mice kind of smelled as you’d expect but we didn’t want to waste the opportunity to do SOMETHING with them. This is the best we could come up with on short notice.
Kind of Like Fun 
Your logic is so very different from mine.