Monster 10 mile recap

So training has been going ok (I think the last time I wrote we did our 16 or 18 miler) and we successfully finished our 20 miler with no nutrition issues.   Since I've been having knee pain issues we opted to his the Luce Line which is an old railroad bed that has been converted to a limestone trail.  So it was flat, soft and straight.  My knee held up pretty well until around mile 15-ish when I started to get tweaky pains from time to time.  (damn it....)    We managed to hold an overall average pace of 9:20-something so I was pretty happy with that. 

This past week was a step-back week so while our weekday mileage went up and the weekend went down, it was all Easy pace which was nice.  Unfortunately though we got stuck inside for an 8 mile day due to really bad weather so we did 4 miles going in circles on a short track and then 4 miles on a dreadmill.  yuck!

Last weekend was Halloween and since our training run was supposed to be 8 miles and we had a discount to enter the Monster 10-mile we opted in to that race and decided to dress up.  I had an old pirate costume and Mark bought a few accessories.  It was a lot of fun running as pirates and surprisingly the miles went by relatively quickly.  I think when your past long runs have been 16, 18, 20.....10 goes by pretty fast, especially when there are people in costume all around you to look at. 

We went into the race thinking I could potentially get a new PR but after the first two miles of what felt like a major shuffle-fest, I wasn't so sure that was going to be possible.  But once we got free of the pack we started averaging 8:10-something miles and I was feeling pretty good.   Not a super hard pace but moderately hard.  My knee started to give me problems around mile 8 so it was more of a mental struggle to get throught the pain the last two miles.  

We pulled in to the finish in 1:24:02...holy S^$! that was a little over 8 minutes off my old 10-mile PR.   And I think, had we not gotten caught up in the crowds of the first few miles, we would have even beat Mark's old PR of 1:22:--   Now granted if he wasn't running with me he would have blown that out of the water but still it was pretty cool to cut that much time off my own run.

Arrr maytee!!! :-P

I have not been logging my training miles/paces/heart rate very well and I do want to find an easy way to start doing that but luckily looking back at my past few seasons of run/tri training I do have evidence that my speed/endurance has improved.   I need to go back and review that from time to time because, like I think a lot of athletes struggle with, you never FEEL like you are getting any better, faster, stronger.   But the race results prove it.

And provided the body doesn't fall apart.....there may be a Boston in me one of these next years.  Cross your fingers for me please :)

Wedding updates have been posted on our combined, A Life More Complete, blog.