Some stat.s :

1.58 miles in 14:18 at the end of practice, doing 3 hard pace(9:05), 1 min active rest, 2 hard, 1 rest, 2 hard, 1 rest, 2 hard, 1 rest, 1 hard. That was round 2...in between two steep hills...with little or no rest...then 4 barefoot strideouts on grass. Holy smokes I'm tired.

Lap 1 pace 7:46/mile held for 3 minutes!

Lap 2: 9:30/mile held for 9:30 = one mile

Lap 3: 9:16 pace held for .19 mile - I was EXHAUSTED at this point. So this is good news

Copied and pasted from my message board post (for posterity? :P)

I am supposed to be in recovery week and could not resist the season's first interval speed practice today.

I run with the areas big-time winners. When I showed up I noticed an older guy and a motherly-lookng woman. I was relieved...until I found out the woman was a marathoner and the dude just came in SEVENTH in his age group in the Boston freakin' marathon! There was one lady there who had never done this before and was pacing about with me and peed herself from exertion - this is NOT an uncommon occurrence there, though we're supposed to be working 'comfortably hard' - we all overdo it. And man, is it beautiful to see these people run. Aaron Stone, I believe, came very close to 2:30 at Boston within the last few years. Amazing. They win everything around here.

SO, out of 20 superheroes I was running lastish the whole time on the track - but I clocked in one interval around 7:45mph (1/4 mile lol) and my last mile which was 3 hard, 1 working rest, 2 hard, 2 hard, 2 hard (minutes with working rests) I was about a 9 minute mile. VERY good for lil' old me

I'm so tired I feel like a drunken texter. It was cool though - we do barefoot strides and steep hills and all that. It's humbling being last, but I've improved every year through this process. The 'coach' says I have the most positive attitude of anyone he's ever met. That made me feel like Rudy

**such nice feedback from this (thanks Kevinbe :)

With mom's husband - felt way to easy and conversational but this is what he said his bike computer said - mine said 15 miles but has been resetting itself lately, so who knows? Or cares

It should be noted that I pumped up my tires this time...I neglected to do this for my 42 mile ride - duh.

Rest Day #2 - cuz sometimes that's how I gotta' roll when my daughter has a week off with me and it is a recovery week

Ran with her while she biked and ran (practiced) for her kid triathlon on May 5 :)

I'm really proud of myself for this one. I asked my (very supportive) hubby to drop me off 8 miles from home and we hid two waterbottles along the way so I could drink in 3 mile increments. I must say that I spend about 30 seconds at each water bottle and turned off my watch timer during those times. I think this was fair since I could run with a dixie cup in a race but I needed to leave the water bottles hidden but where we could find them. This DID possibly give me a race strategy though, of maybe walking for 30 seconds at 3 mile intervals of water stations. It's a 30 seconds that helps me to recover a lot, I believe.

The drinking was good - I limited it to 5 sips at my first station and by the second I couldn't help downing half the water bottle. At those first 6 miles I was on pace to beat my very best 10K time! Granted, it was VERY downhill - I didn't plan this but I sure did appreciate it I swear, the first 1.5 miles was downhill!

One bad thing that happened was that I wore bike socks during this run to see how my feet would like that. The didn't.  I have two horrible blisters - one on each foot to prove that fact. SO, I learned that I should have dry, running socks ready in my shoes on race day.  Also, I need to start switching to Hammer powder rather than Gatorade because that's what will be available on the race course come race day.

Finally, I overdid it a bit. You'll see by my split times that I went out real hard - especially after yesterday's bike. I had to walk another 1/2 mile up my hill AFTER running 8 and I walked in the door looking like a zombie. My lovely husband went out and picked up my waterbottles and is being very sweet to me. I will definitely need tomorrow's rest day. I may have to take a few days off of running because of the blisters.

I also am having trouble with my right shoulder and need to take a few days off of swimming. This may be a bike week coming up. I'm OK with that. I'm starting to feel like I can really do this HIM. Go me.

Mile 1 : 9:33 ( um more like 9:00 since I stopped and peed)

Mile 2 : 9:26

Mile 3 : 10:18

Mile 4: 10:21

Mile 5: 10:51

Mile 6: 11:49

Mile 7 : 11:17

Mile 8 : 11: 58 (but more like 11:45 I believe...)

Then I walked up our ridiculous hill. The end.