I've been planning on running the 10K at Chaptico -- I think Crystal is still undecided which distance to go. I've only ever run a single 10K (Capitol, at 43:53) so it should be easier to improve that PR -- but my last 5K was a big improvement in my 5K (at Greenwell, 19:39) -- so whichever I run, I'll be stressed about trying to improve my time, so it will be fairly stressful for me I think. My training philosophy right now is just trying to get in a fair amt of mileage and long runs every other weekend (gonna try to do 20 tomorrow).

Perhaps DR and Perry could come to some sort of arrangement, as you both have similar goals for the 5K race. You could push each other to keep pace to finish in roughly 19:30, and then both of your goals will be accomplished.

I know pizza can be alright in moderation, but take these numbers into account: Thin Crust: 110 calories Sauce: 10 Cheese: 60 Pepperoni: 50 According to Dominos.com, those are the calories I consumed in one-eighth of the pizza. Of course, I'm not saying it's bad to eat pizza. I'm not arguing that it's even bad to eat this way every once in a while. My concern is that I've talked about getting in the best shape of my life, and I ate the entire pizza on top of a week of ribs, and the wing feast from Friday night. That's not including the potato chips, popcorn, candy, etc. that I haven't previously discussed. I guess what I'm saying is that I found this to be much more acceptable over the past couple of months. However, now that I have a goal race eight weeks out, I need to get the terrible [evening] eating habits under control. Believe me, the evening after the race, I will probably eat up.

I was curious to see whether or not Perry would beat my 41:45 10K PR time at Chaptico ...

Perry, how fast do you think you could do a 5k today? A 6:30 pace is on target for a 20:00 5k, which may or may not be too fast for a 10k. On the one hand, I think you might surprise yourself and keep 6:30 very easily. If you have done any speedwork lately where you routinely did miles in under 6:30, then it might not be bad going that pace. If you don't do it often, then pacing the race may be more important. You could run conservatively and pace the race, or you could be ambitious and push yourself from the start a bit. There's another method to "racing". When it comes to time, pacing it or not may alter your finish time. However, when it comes to placement, there are advantages to starting the race a little fast (just a little, though). If you find yourself in the upper tier of runners after the first couple of miles, then you are in a better position to challenge the upper tier for a strong finish. If you start out too easy, then you may take yourself out of the race and fall behind with no real incentive to push yourself. If you're running for time, then careful consideration of what shape you're in is important, but, if you're running for placement, then keeping an eye on your competition is important.

Joe's above post isn't very clear. Is he encouraging Perry to maintain a 6:30 pace in a 5k or a 10k? I think Perry would have no problem exceeding that pace in a 5k, as he's already run a 19:39 5k race, but a 6:30 10k pace would put him very close to breaking 40:00!

This race is in Hughesville on September 6th. http://hughesvillerunningclub.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/hughesville_registration_form.pdf Since it's one week after Chaptico, that may not be too appealing. It looks like some guy is trying to start a running club up there. Good luck to him. Perhaps we should start our own chapter of that Hash club stuff. They're a little extreme at times, but they're recognized. They have an upcoming race: http://www.whitehousehash.com/rdr/ The list of "Who's Coming" is not safe for work. I learned the hard way. I saw Perry making some posts on the CBRC site about a small triathlon sort of race on September 6th. I was a little intrigued by it. I'm trying to figure out what swimming 800m is like. I swam the other day for maybe 300m and I suspect I was rather slow. I wasn't tired, but it's not too terribly tiring when you're going slowly.

Wow... according to the website, this race will feature, among other things: - Live broadcast by T-Bone and Heather - Moonbounce - McGruff the Crime Dog - SPECIAL GUESTS! Are T-Bone and Heather really still on the air? They suck.' Apparently this club is not competing with the CBRC: "A special *thanks* to Liza Recto and Vic Papagno of the Chesapeake Bay Running Club. Without their help we wouldn’t have been able to organize the run in the time frame we did."