Racing Myself

What a beautiful and amazing day.  Today was by far the nicest day of 2010....sunny, warm, and oh yeah SUNNY AND WARM!!!!  With that said, it is a shame that me and my family spend the majority of the beautifulness cleaning our cars.  At least we were outside doing it, eh?  Really it had to be done, three months of dirt, grime, salt and sand was caked on both or our rides and they weren't looking so healthy.  I am happy to say that after two hours of rinsing, scrubing, rinsing, scrubing, drying, vacuuming, wiping and then staring, the cars were immaculate.  I should point out that during the whole car-washing-thing, my girls were out riding their bikes, scooters, rollerskates (yes, old school rollerskates), and just having fun in the 55F weather, that really felt like 75F (until the sun got a bit lower in the sky and the chill came back).

So what did today hold for me?  Well, an easy six mile run which I was kind of looking forward to and kind of not.  [Aside] See, yesterday I had to do my simulated 5K, which is much harder than it sounds.  In an race, unless you are the front runner, you have the opportunity to chase down other runners.  Yesterday I did not have that luxury.  I had only my Garmin Forerunner 305, a goal pace and my legs to guide me.  My goal was 21:15 (6:50/mile) and as I started out it looked like it just might happen as I was cruising rather easily at about a 6:40/mile pace for the initial .5 mile.  Then I eased a bit as the road went from flat to slight incline.  Still I manged to bang out the first mile in 6:52....I should point out that I was chasing no one, so tough to keep your pace when one has to push oneself.  The first half of the second mile is definitely uphill most of the way and it was reflected in my time as mile number two was a slow 7:16 (or thereabouts).  I decided that despite the weak second mile I was going to step it up for  the last 1.11 mile.  I gave it all that I could give....have I mentioned that it was just me out there?  I turned into my developement and had only .25 miles left and my pace was holding steady at 6:55.  I pushed as hard as I could and finished in 21:45 (6:59/mile).  I would call my run yesterday a success and think I did a pretty good job pushing myself.

Back to today, six miles at a decent pace, 50F, sunny and the slightest of winds.  I wish I could say that I felt great during my run.  I can't.  I wish I could say that I felt OK.  I can't.  I wish I could say I enjoyed my run.  I can't.  Why?  Well, I still don't fell all that great physically, nose is really congested, which consequently just wears me out.  [Here is where I talk about how I toughed it out]  Despite not feeling great, I still went out and tried to run hard, I wanted to be under 8:00/mile.  It just wasn't in the cards today.  I did manage to do it in 8:07/mile pace with four of the six miles under 7:59, and the last two in 7:54 and 7:36 respectively.  I choose not to talk about miles three and four (both uphill and both ugly).

Oh, I didn't really talk about Saturday all that much.  My sister-in-law, her husband and daughter came out on Friday night to spend part of the weekend with us.  We ended up going in to downtown Doylestown to just walk around and get outside.  We had a great time.  I don't think that I have ever really walked around town as much as we did and we went into a ton of great shops (including Let Them Eat Cupcakes, Doggie Deli, Raymer's Homemade Candies‎, etc) and had a great lunch at MOM's