CHANGE OF PLANS

After seeing snow flurries the first two days of May, we finally got some decent running weather – 53 sunny and fairly calm. I met my team at Macalester College again. In the past, I’ve complained about some of the smaller groups we’ve had and not having anyone to push the pace. Tonight was another small group but Daniel (one of the triathletes) was running hard and together we chased Jenna. We ran for 1:34 and I called it 13 miles. About 40 minutes of that included variations of the Twin Cities Marathon hills from mile 21 to 22.

After the last hill, Jenna, Daniel and I ran a 5-mile “cool-down.” That’s in quotes because we were probably going sub-7 pace. It was interesting to talk to Jenna about her Get in Gear performance. The race pays 3-deep ($1,000, $500 and $250). Last year Jenna was 4th. This year she was 3rd and the gal in 4th was only 3 seconds back. She talked about how this gal kept surging then she would fall back. Daniel watched the race and he said at the 6 mile mark he thought Jenna was going to come in 4th.

I was planning on running a half marathon on the 14th. However, a few logistical issues, family-wise, aren’t going to allow that to happen. Instead, I’m going to do a 30k this weekend with Eric and Jim. I’m going to run it as a tune-up for Grandma’s and try to mimic June 18th as closely as possible. At first I was a little leery of running hard for that far a week after my 10k, but my coach said if I wasn’t sore at all from my race, it’d be a good tune-up. Now I’m more excited about it than I was the half marathon I was planning – maybe because based on last year’s results, my marathon pace would place me in the top-5.