dear taper king (45 days) - yay for signing up for the RnR. I'm sure hoping for a decent marathon for you. Maybe you can go all the way with aamos, erika, holly and the fast girls as, as a host city runner, I'm aiming for last place and sure don't want to be battling it out with you for the honors. - your taper buddie (17 days)

Holly, you may start experimenting with a redesign of that interval workout, aiming toward keeping the recovery interval at no longer than a minute for all work sessions of 1,000 meters or less.

Is it okay to walk during the recovery interval? If I could walk the entire minute, I could probably do a 1-minute recovery now, but if I aim at the slow jog I am doing, I believe I need to slow the paces somewhat. I swear the winter cold makes speed so much more difficult for me. These same paces were easier in October.

Good Chilly Morning all. Woke up to temps in the teens, a light dusting of snow and icey roads this a.m. - not the norm for southern oregon. Schools were on a 2 hr delay, but I have much to work to do, so went into work and DH is taking DS to school this a.m. My plans for a lunchtime run were foiled when I was reminded about a luncheon for one of our attorneys today. This is her last week with us as she was elected to a judge position. I'm always up for a nice (read: free) lunch, but I also really was looking forward to a run today. If possible, I may leave work early so I can still run and get home at a normal dinner time. Depends on how productive I am today I guess. A friend loaned me a couple running books she has and one is Karnazes 50/50 book. I haven't started reading it yet, but last night I thumbed through it to find the part where he ran Deadwood so I could read about our Aamos. very cool! He wrote quite a bit about you Amy! I sort of chuckled at the part where you signed up to run with him as a favor to the RD because no one else had signed up. I'll have to tell my friend, Laura (whose book it is) that she'll be meeting you next summer. Tim - no worries on signing up when you aren't running. I did the same. I think that means we'll both have good luck. And I plan on running R&R slowly - I want to enjoy every minute of the race, so since it'll take me ALOT of minutes to finish it, I guess that means I'll have more fun than the fast peeps!

Holly, in that case I would adjust the times to run the work sessions a bit slower. What is your most recent fiveK time? You can work off that mpm pace and figure about 20 seconds per mile slower than that for these workouts. Tim whether you walk or jog to cool down it's the same thing. The idea is not to run one final full out mile and then go straight into your house. Let your HR recover gently and keep blood flowing to the muscles to aid in tomorrow's recovery. We have a masters runner in our club who runs 16 and change for the fiveK. He finishes all his long runs very fast, but he briskly walks a mile when he is done. I think that's great technique. In a hugh display of courage I donned one of those Asics skull cap hats, whatever they are called, and some tech gloves the Saint lent me and braved the elements. Once I got going I felt fine. 6.7 miles in all, and had the whole park to myself. Spareribs

It's all relative Stumpy! Not too many years ago I ran a marathon at 6:30 pace so I'm feeling like a slowpoke these days. Anyone have any favorite running socks? My brother wants running socks for Christmas and has not specified a brand. I'm a Wrightsocks person myself, but does anyone have a recommendation for socks they love? Meg

What is your most recent fiveK time? You can work off that mpm pace and figure about 20 seconds per mile slower than that for these workouts.

I don't have a recent 5K time. My only race this season has been a 5-miler on Thanksgiving, which I ran in 42:02 (8:25), nearly 3 minutes slower than this race last year.

I second the Thorlos - I love mine. Tim - What I learned is that she has a boyfriend of 5 yrs, but it's a long distance relationship (they live over an hour apart and just see each other on weekends), but she really hasn't been interested in maintaining the relationship for quite some time now and I anticipate she'll be breaking it off. She actually dreads the weekends that it's her turn to drive there and just vents to me on the weekends he's here because he gets frustrated with her wanting to go for a run when he's here. I'm not sure why she is even continuing it at this point - habit maybe? not sure.