Last of the Long Runs...TCM one week away!

I did not run with my running buddies yesterday. It was a grey, cool and wet morning. I just wanted a morning to sleep in, catch up from a long week of travel and work and just "be".

Today was a much better day for my last long run of 10 miles before the marathon next week.

We finally have a nice sunny day here -- first time in about a week. The lakes were crowded, but not too terribly so. I ran to Lake Calhoun for my warm up and then did a 6 minute run/1 minute walk and covered all three lakes (Calhoun, Lake of the Isles and Lake Harriet). I covered the distance in 1:58:00, which is a very good time for me.

I know I should have been practicing either my marathon or Long Slow Distance pace, but the day was great and I felt pretty good.

I also got nabbed by a bit of competitiveness. When I was running the first half of Calhoun, I passed a woman who was speedwalking next to a guy that was running slow. I went from the first half of Calhoun over to Isles and closed that lake out, came back to finish Calhoun and then hopped over to Harriet.

I bumped in to that couple again. The woman was really kicking the speedwalking thing in to high gear and for whatever reason, I didn't feel like having my butt handed to me by a speedwalker. So I passed them.

Then it was one of my walk breaks and they passed me. When it was time for me to run again, I passed them and put a bit of distance between them and me. Walk break, they caught up and passed again, which REALLY bugged me. So I kicked up my pace.

She must have had her own competitive edge, because the next time they passed me, they were both running and at a pretty good clip.

And so it went, back and forth for about half of the lake.

With not much left to go, I finally decided "screw it" and kicked it out myself.

I passed the imaginary finish line way before they did. (And the crowd went WILD! LOL).

Now the hurry-up-and-wait starts till next week and the Marathon and then the trip to Europe.

Yippee!