Twin Cities 10 Miler Goals...Maybe.

Monday I had an easy 6 miler on the schedule.  I had to rip roar through that puppy to make it home in time to get gussied up to watch the Monday Night game:  Packers v. Bears.  Pay no mind to me getting gussied up to watch a football game, as that's neither here nor there.  The trails were flooded out about 2.5 miles in to my route and my legs were traaaaaaaashed from the 10 miler the day before, so I decided to call it a day at 5.

I did 5 miles in 48:55 for a pace of 9:45.

Sadness prevailed during the game, but I won the award for cutest Packers fan in a Jennings' jersey, so it's okay.  jk.  But seriously....... My money's still on GB for the season, obvs.

Wednesday night I set out for my first speed work session in 3 weeks.  Uh whaaaaaaaaa?  This girl loves her speed, bring it BACK.  After finishing Born to Run on my lunch break, I was seriously raring to go.  Which is shocking, because I've been dreading tempo runs for the last 4 months.  Seriously, I whined like a little B before all of them.  Icky.  I was a little concerned at how it would go, however.  I had 7 miles to do with 5 at a pace of 8:19.

I started running and my knee was kind of wonky, and so was my left hip.  [Legs get it together now pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!]  When I started my first tempo mile I was in the 7:50s.  And then when I looked I was in the 8:30s.  And so it continued for the next 5 miles.  No wonder I couldn't run an 8:15 paced half marathon; my legs have no idea what that feels like.

Partially through the 2nd tempo mile I thought about cutting the run short because my leg hurt, and I got to thinking about Born to Run and the portion that mentioned how much those runners truly loved to run, and you could see the sheer joy and happiness on their faces as they flew up trails.  I decided the least I could do is enjoy the run.  :)  And what do you know, when I started focusing on the fun and not the pain, the pain disappeared.

I did have to "off road it" a bit on one area of the trail since it was flooded out, and I must've picked up a blood sucking mosquito, because as I got started again I had an intense itch on my leg.  I stopped to scratch it but nothing was there.  It continued to itch and I scratched it violently while in stride.  When I got home I realized that perhaps I scratched it too violently as I had left claw marks on my legs.  Ooops.  (Sorry that's a lot of upper thigh to be showing to the interwebs, but nothing compared to the shorty mcshort-short running shorts I wore on this run.  Whoa!  But I totally understand why serious racers wear them, you feel nekkid and that = fast running. heh.)

I did 7 miles in 1:01:09 for a pace of 8:45.  Tempo average pace:  8:22.
Tempo miles:  8:18, 8:20, 8:24, 8:25, 8:23.

Twin Cities 10 Miler Goals
I'm taking off to Minneapolis sometime Friday (after I get my huge to-do list completed) and meeting up with Alyssa to take on Twin Cities 10 Mile/Marathon weekend.  I've been thinking about my goals for this race all week, and for the first time in....uh... forever, I don't know what my goal time will be.  Before getting injured my knee condition I had thought I could run the race at an 8:07 pace.  This was based on the McMillan calculator and the 1:48 I was to get in the half.  Based on the time I actually got in the half, McMillan tells me that I should just take a nap instead of running should do a 8:26 pace (which is slower than the HM pace I had attempted 3 weeks ago, mind you).  And then, of course today I looked at the results from last year and saw that only 4 or 5 girls in my age group (22-29) had faster times the one I had thought I could run before my knee hurt.

Which leaves me with ??????????  I'm going to run.  If I'm not tired, I'm going to run a little faster.  If I get tired, I'm going to continue to run.  If my knee hurts, I'm going to be happy that I'm dealing with something as minor as runner's knee that is merely an annoyance and not an all out injury.  And I guarantee that running the last 7 miles of the marathon course is going to make me want to sign up for next year's Twin Cities Marathon.  And Mr. EO is trying to convince me the same.

So if I'm feeling great, I want to get as close to 1:20 as possible.  At the very least, I'd like to run a faster pace than my half marathon time of 8:34, which could prove to be tough based on how much not running I've been doing lately.  Best of luck to all the TC racers.  I hope to see you all there!  I'll be the one in green, natch. ;)