Race #8 was miserable. Hot and still. Race #10 felt a bit better.

This one felt really good. And the time was much better.

Think this shows I’ve been futzing too much with technology over the last year and not pushing myself enough. A really slow start on a beautiful evening in the low eighties with a strong breeze.

Fantastic weather tonight. A wonderfully cool 79 degrees with a breeze pretty much the entire length of the race. I ended up running behind a kid who looked like me at 10 years old for about the first mile. Like chasing my youth. Except that he was far faster than I ever was, which was funny because he seemed about equally coordinated with limbs flying every which way as he ran.

Very happy with this race time. Wish I’d pushed myself just a tiny bit more since I only needed to shave off about 20 more seconds to be under 8 minutes. All in all a fantastic race and end to the season.

Troy ran with me. Very hot. Definitely in that point of summer when my time starts dropping off due to the heat. But apparently running with troy pushed me faster.

Running is very pleasurable for me. Except that is, when I arrive at a corner. Being tall and not particularly light I tend to have a lot of momentum going. So I approach a corner and begin almost backpedaling. Then I do a sort of skip-step to start going in another direction, and then I have to get back up to speed, which expends a lot of energy. Running on city streets corners aren’t that easy to avoid.

I didn’t really realize how much energy this was taking until the one and only time I’ve fallen running. I tripped over some uneven pavement and I swear it took at least 30 seconds to actually hit the ground as my body flailed horizontally through space and I was painfully aware how slowly I was approaching the ground. I had a lot of time to think and not manage to right myself. You have to have a massive amount of momentum to avoid gravity for 30 seconds.

So, I occasionally watch football games and I’d noticed how a lot of quarterbacks run with the ball in one hand and their other arm stretched down or straight out to the side. It looks like they’re doing it to be cool, but it turns out that makes it really easy to change direction.

So now I approach corners full blast. Put my inside arm straight down or a little bit out and can sail around the corner at full tilt.

Thanks Football!

Woot! Shaved a minute off this time. Which is fantastic because it was HOT! Plus there were a bunch of people unloading boats and a car driving on the trail as I was coming into the finish line so I couldn’t push it. That was a weird race.

But Stella ran a lot that day. And she’s fast. Not as fast as me yet, but I think her grandmother was a little shocked to see her a couple feet behind her at the finish line.

First Town Lake race of the year. I thought I did pretty well. Used my running mix which pushed me quite a bit, but still didn’t come out that fast. This is a little sad because I did the longhorn run which was a 10k in 53:33 for 8:39/mile a few weeks ago. I really thought I’d picked it up a bit. Of course the Longhorn run was a cool morning race, so maybe that’s part of it. I always underestimate the effect of the heat.

28:03, 9:03/mi. I really pushed myself. I’m hoping it was the heat, because that’s just a middle of the road score for me.

Well, I’m back to running every day, so there’s always next year. I’ll chalk up this year’s poor performance to having a newborn.

28:42 – I’m getting slower. I think I need to run with my iPod to speed things up. That was a really nice comfortable run. It was 87 and raining gently. I guess I need the 100+ degree heat to push myself.