Another One Bites the Dust

I don't know if anyone noticed the comments or not, but this is pretty exciting stuff. At least for me, the Dad. My son Tyler, the culinary student, started a blog of his own. And why did he start a blog? He has decided to come on over to the dark side and he's beginning the Couch to 5K program on coolrunning.com. I'm pretty psyched for him. This is something that he decided to do on his own and so far he seems to have taken real ownership of it. I'm so glad that he has taken an interest in his health. I look forward to the day I came cheer him on at the finish line of his 5K. In addition to that we got a letter the other day from his school to let us know that he made the Honor Roll for his first quarter at culinary school. Needless to say we are very proud of him. Stop by, check on his progress, and give Tyler some blogger love.

On the running front, the big news is that I need new shoes. I usually like to have three pair in rotation. On Christmas Eve I retired a pair of Brooks Trance. I began scanning the Internet for some replacements but I couldn't come across any Trance in my size or at a reasonable price. I'm just not ready yet to spent three figures on a pair of shoes. Last Saturday another pair of Trance hit the magic 500 mile mark and ended up in the pile in the garage. Those shoes got me through all 4 marathons I ran in 2006.

This stack represents about 4500 miles. There are 7 pairs of Brooks Trance, a pair of New Balance 765 and a pair of Saucony Grid Omni's in there. I think I've kept all but maybe the first two pairs of shoes I ever had. Finally Sunday night I came across a pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6 at a reasonable price. They will put me back to two pairs, both Adrenalines. I need (want) to have three so I think I will look for a pair of trail shoes to round out the current rotation. I would ideally like to already have another pair of something stashed in the closet as replacement for the current GTS 6 that are over 200 miles themselves. I've got some shopping to do.

The other big news today is that it rained. Today being Tuesday, is speed work day. The track I run on is in pretty sad condition. I was afraid that with the rain the track would be a real mess. So I opted to postpone the speed work until later in the week. Hey, I don't have to try very hard to find an excuse for getting out of speed work. Instead I did a tempo run. I ran out and back on a three miles course. The first mile or so I took it easy and then accelerated up to a decent pace. It was a hard effort but an effort I could sustain. I kept at it for the last 5 miles and ended up with an 8:25 pace overall and 7:59 for the back 3 miles. Although I felt as though I was running significantly harder than the night before which was an easy effort run, my pace was only about 30 seconds a mile faster. McMillan suggests 7:17 to 7:36 for tempo runs. I'm terrible at judging pace. I need to slow down my pace on recovery days and speed it up on the tempo days. Practice makes perfect, but a set of calibrated legs and lungs would be nice.