71 Days and a Quick (for me) Run

  71 days until the Kansas City marathon.

  Today's run was a shorty - a little over 4 miles - but what a difference good weather can make.  The temperature as I write this is 72 with little humidity.  It was in the upper 60s for the beginning of the run.  Since I have a fun 5K race tomorrow, I was going to do an easy 6 but after a mile or so of warm up, I felt so good that I decided to use the run for a bit of a speed run.  As it turned out, every mile was faster than the previous, with the last mile being in the 7:45 range.  I haven't run that fast in over a year.  While I don't plan to run the 5K at  a fast pace (for 5K), I imagine that my ego will once again get in the way of logic.  More after tomorrow.

  I still have to get in some long runs.  This weekend will be the 5K race but I am going to run to the race  and run home from the race.  All told, between 9 and 10 miles.  Sunday will be a long, SLOW run of something over 13 miles.  The training plan that I was trying to follow called for 18 last weekend and 20 this weekend but obviously, that is too far, given my past runs.

  No pains to report.  My knee feels pretty good and my Achilles (both sides) are painless during the runs.  I have stopped taking any ibuprofen and am doing some rolling with "The Stick" (thestick.com).  This is the longest that I have run (both distance and calendar days) without some type of major breakdown.