Discovery Park 7.25 miles

Current Mile total: 1072.25 miles

I usually run with the Redmond Footzone club on Wednesday's but I'm taking my training for the 50 miler very seriously and Scott has requested that for my 4 weeks of peak training I run with them on for workout night. I'll miss my friends over in Redmond but I have to be focused for this race.

I head on over and meet everyone at the park. We meet up and its Brian and Micheal(another SRC employee) leading the bunch today. We do some stretches and head out. One 4.2 mile loop of easy running and a second smaller 2.8 mile loop at half marathon pace. I don't know about everyone else, but I felt they were all going a little fast. I felt justified in my pace, hanging out in the back because i was joined by Brian. Seems he was just taking it easy too. We chatted it up and it was cool to have a conversation with him, although it was about nothing significant, it was cool just to have that time. Brian is just a real nice guy. I've said this over and over already in my blog. Its kinda odd, cause imagine if you liked to play basketball and you got to on a regular basis play one on one with LeBron James. In some ways you're a bit start stuck that you get to play against him. But on another level, he becomes just another guy, who's out there sweating and aching and even walking up the huge flight on stairs that is so steep and long that we all fall victim to its mighty grade. Brian says humbly with a smile, "its funny, no matter how strong you think you are, sometimes..." I actually can't remember the exact quote so I'll not put words in his mouth but needless to say, he was saying that sometimes he gets tired too. So here I am, running with a young runner LeBron James(he wouldn't say so) and he's becoming human and real and just another person. Running is such a great sport. What other sport allows you this luxury? Or might I add, where else could I have the luxury of doing this? Seattle is absolutely one of the best places to be a runner. Scott has a great community of runners at the SRC.

So we were running, yeah, and then the second loop comes up. I thought we had entered the second loop but I thought we'd stop and give ourselves a little breather before we did our tempo portion. So we were probably three quarters through the first mile, maybe more, before I decided that we must be on the second loop and that I had to pick up the pace. And then of course I was behind everyone and felt the need to catch up. So I ended up running faster than I wanted. And I ended up burning out faster than I wanted. Burning out? I shouldn't be burning out, I should just be doing a moderate pace. And that's the funny thing. Everyone else was running strong. I think they were going a bit fast for a half marathon pace. These are people that Kathleen and I run faster than every weekend and they were running faster than us now. Maybe they're stronger on the flat stuff, maybe they're more recovered cause they didn't run on Sunday? I don't know. At any rate. My legs felt heavy and I had no speed that night. Kathleen played it a little better I think. Sounded like she had heavy legs too.

We finished up and did more stretching exercises and that was it. I have to say that the Footzone club actually has a stronger Wednesday workout. We'll see next week what they have in store for us. One thing I did prefer was the stretching before and after, and the hilly workout course of Discovery Park.