Got lucky today

Not sure if I've mentioned this... I'm running the Austin Marathon on Sunday, pacing my friend Dan to his Boston Qualifier. He needs a 3:20:59 at worst, and barring injury or sickness, I have confidence we'll get there no problem. The goal is to hover between 7:32-7:39 pace which is 3:17:30 and 3:20:30. That's about my normal long run pace so I should be fine, and Dan has been running with us for a few months, hence my confidence. I think his current PR (personal record) is around a 3:31, so it'll be a nice improvement for him as well.

So... as i want to make sure i'm 100% fresh to lead him to the promise-land, i got an excused absence from coach Sisson to skip this morning's 12'ish mile workout (with 4 to 6 Mile-repeats at 6:10pace). Not ideal after Tuesday's brutal workout and Sunday looming.

The plan was to meet Bruce (that's recovering from his 50miler last weekend), and just go 8 real easy. The weather continues to be pretty crappy due to el Nino, and today was more of the same. Weather doesn't ever stop me from running, but cold and rain is crappy. (How rainy-crappy you non-Austinites ask? Lake Travis, was 40feet UNDER normal levels last September, and now it's 2 feet OVER normal. About 17 of those feet dropping over the last month. ) I was really looking forward to hearing all about the race (he finished 23rd out of 341 in his first ever 50miler!!), but since the run wasn't critical, and the weather really sucked this am, we decided to cancel the run since it's rare that we get a Thursday to sleep in.

Truth be told at the "Happy Office" (weekly meeting with coach) at a local bar that brews their own beer, i had a couple different ones and was given a shot of bourbon as belated congratulations for my 3rd at Cactus Rose 50 mile. Craft beers are hit or miss for me as many give me brutal headaches, just even 1 will do it (if they're not real mature or overly yeasty or something like that). The Bourbon probably didn't help either, so the sleeping in part was perfect as the headache was brutal!

And that's where I got lucky. I ended up hooking up with a new running friend that needed 7 today for a late lunch run, and somehow we had the entire trail to ourselves. I think we saw 2or3 other runners, and a trio of walkers. But not only did we have the trail to ourselves, no raind, except real light mist for the last 15 mins or so. Karma came along again and he took advantage of daylight to run ALL OVER THE PLACE on the Karma loops since I didn't leash him, and he could see the vast parklands as opposed to our 5:30am dark runs. He was happy to get another 2.2 miles in 2 days!

Got home and within 10 mins, it's POURING again.

wow.. unusually long post about a easy 7 mile run.

Must be the rain, and the continued lingering headache.

Evil Uncle Billy's. Evil.