Day 5 - 205 days to IMLP

Two run days back to back in the books.

Awesome 7+ hour sleep last night so even after work I was refreshed enough to feel excited to run.  Today was slightly more than 5 miles and with the weather poking over 40 degrees for the first time in nearly two weeks I was able to run without leggings.  Ran a nice tempo that would have had me set bot 5k and 5 mile PR's if today's training run was a race.  I still struggle with pacing - I can't tell when I am going too hard other than overheating, labored breathing and a spiked heart rate.  Today I felt good at one mile and saw I was at an 7:55 pace.  Stepped it up for mile 2 since I felt solid and breathing was still steady and I was not hot 7:49 pace.  Shooting for the sub-24 I stepped it up a bit and did mile 3 at 7:27.   Right after the 3 mile mark was an intersection with a railroad track and a woman in a mini van came inches from hitting me.  Gotta love that - my sprint came to an abrupt stop but I still got the 5k in under 24 minutes so I was stoked.

Felling hot at this point I took a swig from my hand held and slowed the pace for the final to miles (8:22 and 8:21) and finished up at home in 39:55 ... a sub-40 in a race is a dream of mine for a 5 miler.  I struggle so mightily in heat and humidity and am having my best running of my life now in the cold and non-humid air of winter.  Will be interesting to see how this will correlate come spring and when I start doing bricks outside.

I received several cool emails today - one was offering to extend my "ambassadorship" of Team New Skin through March - and I was also invited to apply for Team SunRype.  My only issue right now is all branded gear is for warm weather and I am seriously layering at this point.  I really like the NewSkin anti-chafing product (I will devote another post to what I did last year with Team New Skin).  I was also approved to mentor a group on BT (BeginnerTriathlete.com).  I would like to help other Clydes and AThenas with their quest to become competitive triathletes.  I don't think I am an expert by any means at all but I think I can support others with similar experiences to my own.  Hopefully I will get to encourage and assist some guys/gals.

Yesterdays run was 9.2 miles of a scheduled 9-10.  Pace was slated to be in the 9 minute range and I averaged 8:42 over the distance.  Ran hard in mile 8 which spiked my HR way too high but other than that was an uneventful cold and windy run.  Mile splits (8:28, 8:36, 8:45, 8:53, 8:57, 8:40, 8:44, 7:30, 8:01).  I was shot after yesterdays run and went to bed crazy early which gave me over 7 hours of sleep as mentioned above.

Tomorrow I have an hour on the bike, some flexibility and to meet with a tri-coach ... a bunch on tap with the kids as well - should be fun!