...hey... this route's tough... or at least it was last night...

... due to some beautiful (but relatively hot) weather I had intentions of waiting 'til about 8:30 or 9pm to get my run in last night but then, right around 5:30 or so this big old, ominous grey cloud came rolling into town out of nowhere (well, okay, out of the SW, but that's not the point)... I decided I had better get my run in while the gettin' was still good... the route was new for me, which was nice, what wasn't so nice was the strong head wind I meet on the final mile and a half that was coupled with a big hill (one I had managed to forget was so freakin' steep).... oh well, I survived... I finished the run in 30:28, which works out to a 7:37 minute per mile pace, I wasn't too thrilled about it when I got home and crunched the #'s but in retrospect, I 'm fairly happy with my time considering the hill, the wind, and that my knee wasn't feeeling100%...

Tonight's an off night as I mentioned before... I didn't think I'd like it when I saw it scheduled but I'm actually pretty happy about it today!

You know what else I'm happy about? Sunday! Sunday I get to do 7 miles :-D
I haven't done this route since early April, when I think I initially hurt my knee, it's an awesome run!!!

On a different note, I've been trying to figure out what my marathon goal should be, although it's still 6 and a half months off, it's still interesting to think about. Originally, I was thinking about shooting for a 4 hour time, which works out to a 9 minute plus mile, I'm currently averaging a 7:15 minute per mile pace, but, of course, this is at a much shorter distance.... it's tough to come up with a time goal because, on one hand I want to have something to aim at so that I push myself to reach said goal, but on the other hand, I don't feel like failing on my first attempt at 26.2... I'm glad I have plenty of time to work this out... hopefully the #'s start to make things more clear for me come July & August when the long runs start getting into the mid teens and the "short" runs are still a good 6 miles... we'll see....

Check it out... here's a fun "even splits" break down of a 3:20 marathon (the pace I was running last night)...

mile 1 -	0:07:38
2 -	0:15:16
3 -	0:22:54
4 -	0:30:32
5 -	0:38:10
6 -	0:45:48
7 -	0:53:26
8 -	1:01:04
9 -	1:08:42
10 -	1:16:20
11 -	1:23:58
12 -	1:31:36
13 -	1:39:14
14 -	1:46:52
15 -	1:54:30
16 -	2:02:08
17 -	2:09:46
18 -	2:17:24
19 -	2:25:02
20 -	2:32:40
21 -	2:40:18
22 -	2:47:56
23 -	2:55:34
24 -	3:03:12
25 -	3:10:50
26 -	3:18:28
26.2 - 3:20:00