Finally, it's March! Better weather last weekend for sure. Did 10 & change on some pretty muddy trails Sunday. Only managed a little over 11 mm but the hr avg was 141 bpm so it was good cardio. I planned more but bagged the third loop because I was slowing down. St. Louis is 34 days from now. I have the 8th & 9th as the last two good long-run days. I may put a 17 - 18 miler in on the 16th if the quality of the run on the prior weekend isn't good. With racing the 1/2 on the 22nd I want to have a good taper. I just have to accept that the weekly mileage is going to be less from here on out. I dropped this morning because it was raining hard and 35°F with wind when the alarm went off. It's forecasted sleet and a couple of inches of snow by tomorrow. I might try a short run this evening. I will just use parts of these shorter runs to put in some M goal pace work and see what I get from it. Groov: Nice work with the pain in the 1/2! It's good your getting treatment and have some qualified opinion that training and racing is not damaging your leg. Be flexible. (no pun intended) Pain that gets worse means the treatment or workouts need adjusting. Opinions can be wrong or change as well. Hope you are able to work through it. Salathe: Hope the hip improves. I hope to be up to a trail ultra out west soon. Here we have woods and hills. Many parks are just scarred over farms but the State DOC has done nice work with them. M-Peach Great to see you back at it!

Salad - good to see you back here. Shame about the hip. Recover well. Erika - hope the relay went well. They sound like huge amounts of fun. I'd really like to do a big one. This is the one that interests me the most: http://www.greenmountainrelay.com/ It'd be cool to do one as a 6 man ultra team. No way I'd be able to this year, maybe next. I've got two friends who are interested so that's half the team right there. Dances with dirt in MI would be another strong contender. Long term plans - anyone interested in a team BLISTER relay? It's gorgeous this morning - 40+ degrees! Shorts weather! Still quite a bit of ice on the sidewalks, though. Did a tempo run this morning - still trying to get a good feel for "comfortably hard" or "15k-HM" pace. For shorter tempo runs it's around 8:45. When they get longer, it's hard to judge just how much to ease up. This morning was going to be 10 w/5 at T pace which was right around 8:50. For a longer tempo run I'm thinking a bit under 9:05 would be a better pace. Did 8 with 2.5 at T pace. It was so nice, I just can't bring myself to be dissappointed in the run, even though it came up a little short.

Arizona was awesome. The relay was so much fun, but parts of it were really hard. I've never run so many consecutive sub-7:30 minute miles on hills in my life! Here's a link to the results: http://www.ragnarrelay.com/index.php?option=com_dynamicpages&Itemid=35&page=results&raceName=delsol&raceId=8&year=2008, our team came in 22nd (Sand y Sol was the name). I would do another one of these in a heartbeat. We won our division (mixed masters) but there were only three in the whole division. The biggest accomplishment was the 22nd out of over 150 teams. Very cool. As a team, we're still trying to figure out how to do the race report. As soon as it's done I'll post a link to it for you guys!! I finished up my weekend in Arizona with a 14.25 mile long run. Very slowly... I had a 20 on the schedule, but it became obvious pretty quickly that that wasn't gonna happen. I'm a little sore today, but not bad. Today's a rest day, I'll spend the evening doing laundry. Cash, I love the Boy Genius reference... but whenever you say it it's not good news. How was Suzie's tri? Bugs, there's no way I'd be able to pull up all my race stuff cuz I didn't keep a log for the first year and a half of my running. I did a few 5k's in that time, but nothing serious. Hope all you guys with owies and injuries get better soon. Now is not the time to be broken down!!!

Erika, there is a relay race that goes from Wis to MN in the fall. Would be right up your alley. Woke up feeling a year older today.

I have to say, that relay race sounds awfully cool, Erika. I'll head over there and check out that race report. So much strategy (how many legs, how long, order, etc.). Sounds like you guys rocked it. Happy Birthday Bugs (if it is indeed the case)! P2R, since I know you do the LHR stuff, you may want to check out tri-kev's race report over in the racing thread. Interesting how his HR responded late in the race. Sounded a bit like some of the training runs you've reported... I had a really dumb run with my regular running partners. Should've done an easy recovery jog but ended up in a 6 mile progression run. Silly really. I'm going out of town today so I'll be off the net for a bit. Hoping to get some TM in at the hotel at a minimum.

Bugs that does sound cool!!! One more day till PT... trying to behave... weather is very nice but it is hard... jogged with my dog to the mailbox yesterday... it was nice - we went .3 miles my lungs were not thrilled, but my knee didn't hurt (that i remember). We shall see i guess...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUGS!!!!!!!!

Happy birthday bugs! 9 miles on the TM this morning. The whole city is encased in ice.