Week of November 8th-14th

Monday: 7mi / 45min in Pisgah w/Griffin and Jimmy. Cold and blustery with freezing rain. Quite a few trees down in the woods. Feeling good. Lifted total body.

Tuesday: 7mi / 46min in Pisgah w/Griffin. A little stiff and sore today.

Wednesday: 8mi* / 52min. Track workout 8 x 400m @67 avg w/200m rest. w/Andy, Mark, and Fyffe(last 2). Tough workout for me. The rest was too short for an R workout, and the repeats were too fast for an I workout, I guess I was kind of training in no man's land. I hate when I do that! I need to stick to the Daniel's formula, it works for me. It's fun to run with other people, but I need to be smart. It was nice to have such a large group of people at the track this week.

Thursday: 6mi / 43min in Pisgah w/Fyffe, Ferenc, Boj, M.C., and 5 wolves. We were gonna run 10 miles, but a porcupine changed our plans. Ellie and Lena both got quilled. Ellie looked bad. She had about 50 quills in her muzzle, gums, and the roof of her mouth. She was bleeding quite badly. Fyffe and Boj ran a world record time back to my house to get pliers and a head lamp, while Ferenc and I worked on the quills with our hands. The damn porcupine sat there and watched the whole thing! I learned a few things on this run: Boj can hammer with adrenaline(just ask Fyffe!), Ferenc is a good surgeon, and Ellie is hard to kill. We all made it back alive and enjoyed some good eats courtesy of Jen back at my house. Even Ellie ate which was a good sign that her mouth was already feeling a bit better.

Friday: 10mi / 71min in Pisgah w/Ferenc, Goup, Boj and the Girls. Got dark out there. My legs felt like crap. That porcupine was in the same spot, sitting in a tree!

Saturday: 8mi / 52min in Pisgah w/Ferenc and the Girls. Good run. Legs feeling great. Ran into M.C. and Jimmy. Earlier in the day, I watched the DIII regionals xc meet w/Goup, Boj, and Lynn. It was great to see Pipp, MacKnight, and Paige have such awesome races. It looked like a really sweet xc course.

Sunday: 11mi* / 67min. Magic Mtn. 5mile road race - 27:17(5:27) 2nd. I wanted to run a fast 5miler and try to crack 26 minutes. I picked the wrong course for that! On the warm-up with Boj, Ferenc, and Goup we all decided to ditch our watches and run on feel. This was gonna be slow! It was a very tough hilly course. I went out pretty fast w/Ferenc. On the big climb at 1.5mi I pulled away. I questioned myself, wondering if it was a good idea to try to pull away from a great climber this early in the race. Hey, I was feeling pretty good. I hit the rolling uphills at 3 miles and I slowed down big time. Yikes. I could hear Josh reeling me in. He caught me at 3.5, I tried to hang with him, but he dropped me at 4miles and that was it. He crossed the line 11 seconds ahead. I'm pretty pleased with how I ran, maybe I should have saved more on the climb. It was a good effort.

Total: 57mi - O.K. week. I need to get my mileage back up next week. I had fun at the race. I need to lift more and make sure I get a decent long run next week. I also want to kick some butt at Lil Rhody and break 45min.