I'm not sure which is slower-- the speed this site is running at or me. Regardless, I'm exercising. I'm also greatly looking forward to the marathon next month. I will be getting an application to Perry, too, so that perhaps this race can be counted for the League!

Once again I intend to start by the Callaway Food Lion shortly after 12 p.m. this Saturday. What is a swim video, by the way? Joe: will you be present at the marathon to cheer us on, or was that your subtle way of announcing that you will in fact be competing in the event? Rick: it's been awhile since we've heard from you on here. How's training for the St. Patrick's Day 5k going?

Where is that relay race being held? Not in Southern Maryland, I'm guessing. But I like the idea of breaking it into three segments rather than just two.

Indeed, with the exception of my long runs and 400/800 workouts, my training has also be rather unremarkable. Like last night when I did three mild maintenance miles at a 9:11 pace.

I'd like to do track on Tuesday, but I've gone 7+miles each day for the last six, to finally get myself a week with over 50miles -- 12 yesterday at Piney Point, 6 this morning with some of the tri ppl, then a swim workout this afternoon with some tri ppl followed by 3 more miles just after the swim. So I didn't do any long run this week, but I got my top mileage in. I'll take tomorrow entirely off. If I feel well on Tuesday, I'll be up for track. I've put my knee into a bucket of cold water several times -- as an experiment since DR & Rick both have iced with good results apparently.

I do plan to take several brief walking interludes during the second half of the actual marathon. I know people will pass me when I do, but I've got a feeling that I'll be catching back up to them later down the road!

Goucher College Track, 6:30 - 7:30 pm Wind chill was in the low-to-mid 20s… very windy at times, 20-25 mph I arrived to find about 20 people doing ladder drills on the track, part of a Charm City Run training program. Fortunately, it turns out most of them were well versed in track etiquette... they knew to move out of Lane 1 as someone was coming to pass. Warm up and cool down were not on the track, but it was too dark to run the trails. Instead, I tried to run on the grassy areas around campus. Half mile at 9:00 pace in between the intervals. I ran the two 1200s much faster than I had intended. I chalked this up to the fact that this was my first track workout of 2008, as well as the training happening all around me. The goal of running these long interval workouts in the seven-week Phase II is to do them at 10K pace (roughly anaerobic threshold pace). Given the lack of serious training in the past couple of months, I'd put that at about 48:00 - 49:00 (7:45 - 7:55). Therefore, these should have been closer to 5:45 - 5:55 1200s. The actual splits were 5:14 (7:01 pace) and 5:25 (7:16 pace), which would be okay if I could run a 10K in 44:19. This is slightly quicker than what I would have aimed to run if this were a VO2 max workout. Those workouts will come in a couple of months, when I get into the heart of 10k training.

A ladder drill is something to the effect of running intervals of staggered distances... for instance, 200-recovery-400-recovery-800-recovery-1600. A pyramid workout would include coming back down to shorter distances.