Swift Fish Net

Last year finished up on a rather promising note as far as running goes. In late August, I ran my second fastest 10 Mile at Annapolis. Then a couple of weeks later I ran my third best half marathon at the Parks Half-Marathon. I got through my thirteenth marathon with my third Marine Corps race in the time range I was aiming for between 3:15:00 and 3:20:00. I struggled with the last 5K which became rather painful with my legs cramping up, but it was a huge improvement over last year’s run on the same course under very similar conditions. It was my second best ever marathon time. It took me longer than I would have liked to recover, so I decided to train for a shorter Spring race rather than doing another marathon training program. The goal is the Pike’s Peek 10K with MCRRC SDP. I’ve never trained specifically for a 10K. I have mostly concentrated on longer races like half marathons and marathons since 1996. Not having to do 20 mile training runs is a welcome break and will allow me to get in some short races during the training. Just to get used to some faster racing after the marathon, I ran 10 mi., 6km XC, 8km, and 5 mi. races starting in late November through December. The first three were not really all out efforts. The 5 mile ended up being a personal best, but when considering that it was only my second ever 5 mile race it perhaps is not saying much. Even so, I was quite happy with the result. It is the best I’ve felt with racing since early 2005.

So, now it is into February after going mostly easy with the training through January after donating blood and then getting rather sick for about four days in the first week of 2010. Despite that, I have gotten in the first 4 track workouts with SDP, although the last couple I had to do on my own on Thursdays. It is difficult to get to the track on time after work. The snow this weekend makes my usual running routes mostly impassable, but I did get in over 16 miles on Friday: 5 mi. in the AM and 11.5 mi. around sunset during the first couple of hours of the developing nor’easter. Yesterday, I ended up just going on a walk (if you can call it that) in the snow.

It took me around four hours to travel 6 miles because 2 1/2 of the miles were essentially wading through 30 inches of snow.

The return route back was perhaps a bit easier after having broken a trail on the Rock Creek path on the way out.

I did get some nice photos out of it, and it was definitely a good workout.

The alternative workouts continued on Sunday with digging out my car.