Well, with the exception of Peter I feel like I fit right in today with everyone doing step-back distances. Mine was 5.1 miles at a 10-minute pace in cool but humid conditions. I think I'm starting to feel like I've been overdoing the exercise between running and biking the last couple of weeks, so I might take it easy the next few days (legs were a bit dead this morning). (Mary, was that the first mention of Brinkley in a while? With all the new pup action, I was afraid you'd forgotten the poor dog.) I hope everyone else is enjoying the traditional post-Labor-Day mayhem on the roads and at the schools, etc.

What a hot day!!! 3k warm up 5X600 at 10k pace with one minute jog in between 4k warm down Girls first day of school. My youngest who is 11 asked me to accompany her to school but once we found her friends she dismissed...OK you can go home now...how sweet. Hope everyone is doing great. Going shopping today for a new kitchen table... Cheers Tall

hopeful4ever I bet DH will be fine. The rest of the guys with him . . . Hope the dogie like the run too! Holly S. alas, coming back from an injury means running a loooooong time before you are back to your old times. But you do get there! CNYrunner mellow miles . . . snort . . . yea like I believe you! breger1 dog! SueT48 nice hill run! My neighbors keep out an old ceramic plate from the bottom of a plant pot filled with seed for the turkeys. I have seen some of the local turkeys hanging in their back yard, you know just sitting around, and then wandering over to the dish every now and then. It is all quite comical. So your plan may work. My DW and I just wait for a flock to come by and then throw seed out for them. At first they are pretty shy, but now when the see us they come running over! It is quite a sight and quite entertaining! Jlynne congratulations on breaking the 1K mile mark today! As a kid, and an adult too, I would rather have 90° sans AC then 20° with heat! Peter NC not only does it feel like Monday but all weekend I kept getting what was happening when during the week all mixed up as a result. I hope your week's schedule seems less confusing than mine apparently is. Good luck with the mileage increase for the marathon. dg. hay the best part of running is the socializing! Don't let it make miles not count! It is what they are for. Thanks for the bunny hat tip. WillRunForBeer the weather looks like it will hold out until some of these hurricanes, or what will be left of them, head our way. Alas, it looks like the next one is timing itself for the weekend here in CT. DickyG having the hurricane weaken and head a bit west was a great break for NOLA. It looks like the damage will not be as bad as they otherwise thought it might be. Some days luck is worth a lot. Nice 4 miler on big hills today. enkephalin if you really want to get that RR out you can borrow my "editor" for a bit. I am sure he or it could be a she will be happy to bug you mercilessly for it! Unrelated to that, I bet your kids are really happy though! perchcreek good call. A break in training earlier in the cycle is better than one later on. rochrunner nice recovery run. wildchild 37°! [Editor: sorry Twocat is flat on the floor. Somebody get a doc!] Help I hate winter . . . gasp . . . and you call that fall! [Editor: nuts the guy is back on the floor! Where is that doc!] Tallrunner oh much better somebody reporting a HOT day! mainerunnah great 20 miler yesterday. Sorry about what looks like a pretty tragic start to the day. Sorry, I forget what is it you do that these self made disasters blow by your desk? Whatever it is I am happy there are others out there to handle things like this. Twocat with no more bunny to beat I got up this morning and my calves were a bit sore from yesterday's race. So I decided I would wait until the afternoon to figure out how much, and what type of run to do if I did one at all. I had planned to run the local Norwalk Half Marathon this Saturday. When I signed up for it a couple of days ago the forecast was pretty good. Now it is a 70% chance of heavy rain and high winds as the remnants of some hurricane hit. Naturally, Friday and Sunday look just fine. Anyway, if the weather turns sour I plan to bail on the race. Here now is my "official" RR from the New Haven 20K. I was very happy to see CNY again. As to the race itself, I ran it and did ok. Not terrific but ok. But the party and food after the race were great! Post-race I headed straight to the food tent to pick up the loaves of bread they were giving out and to get a couple of doughnuts! I LOVE doughnuts! A weakness I picked up from dear old dad. But, since they are such a great health food . . . I never eat them. After a 20K race however all bets are off! Yippee! That CNY is why I looked so happy at the finish! I knew doughnuts were waiting for me! Next it was off to my friend's place for her annual post-race food fest party. There I found blueberry coffee cake, apple cake, muffins of various sorts, cashews, honey roasted nuts, cheese . . . Best of all no inhibitions about eating them either! Yes, I LOVE junk food and it normally takes every ounce of my will power to say no to it. (Holly just in case you thought you were unique here! ) Between eating and seeing my friends I had a great time. Alas, this morning my scale reminded me that my stomach can eat faster than my legs can run which means it is back to starvation rations again. A Quick Word on Injuries[start sermon here] I know a lot of us are either struggling with injuries or have struggled with them and I feel bad seeing when I see our friends get down on themselves about getting one. So I thought I would point out that I saw an article the other day on line by an Olympic level U.S. runner about training and injuries. He said elite athletes get hurt at the rate of once a month due to their training. I suspect "hurt" includes even the most minor tweak. He then wrote that injury management is just a standard part of good training as it is inevitable if you push yourself. Now I do not think anybody here should be training so hard that they injure themselves once a month! Nobody here is going to make a living through there running. We run because we like to do it. Maybe it is the simply pleasure it may bring, or just for the health benefits. However, it does mean people should not think they necessarily did "something wrong" when they get injured either. If you bother to post on a running forum you are waaay more serious about running then the average person. Always remember the average person you see on the street will likely walk less than a mile that day let alone run even two. That walking TV remote control activation device you see would view running four miles as a Herculean feet. Which is a long way to say that you should expect your injury rate to correlate with how hard you push your training in search of performance. Yes, you can and should train in a way that keeps the rate down but it is just unrealistic to expect it to be zero. So for all of our friends here who are recovered from injuries, or are currently recovering from them, or will get them they are little (quite annoying) badges of honor! Injuries, alas, are dispensed by our bodies as one of the rewards of pushing them to their finest physical performance! Do not despair or get down about them when they happen! (Ok, a little bit is normal just do not overdo it. ) We all get better, run again, and (sigh) get hurt again! But as our reward we can hike, travel, play and do a million other things that the world's couch potatoes can only do via television. So be happy even when waiting out your injuries! [end sermon]

Amen. Good sermon, Twocat. Will probably run just a few recovery miles when and if, although I really should go to the gym. It's "boot camp" day there, though, so better go there tomorrow. It was a long weekend, so we went to a marathon. ADT in Col. Springs. There was a lot of downhill, but also a fair amount of altitude (starts at 7250) so a 3:34 for me. Top 5% for women [5th out of 102 women (and the first 4 are all from Colorado, so acclimated.)] Just over top 10% overall [27th out of 251]. The Buffs bested CSU --gotta love a team that brings a live buffalo to the home games as a mascot. grins, A ps: Perch--thinking about you. Can you use the elliptical or bike while you're off?

{{Perchcreek}} Hang in there, Steve buddy... you're doing the right thing. Time for some more pool running? I might join you... Mainerunnah is in law enforcement, right? Sounds like you came back just in time... Wildchild, my knee itself is fine, but I'm bruised a bit and my left shoulder is a little "wonky" feeling. It was a weird fall... sort of felt like slow motion but I remember thinking "roll to the left" to avoid a full face plant in the roots. I didn't do anything yesterday but go shopping and putter around the house. We were going to go out to the lake, but it got too late, DH got cranky and we ended up grilling our burgers and stuff right there at home. Invited his sister over and we sat out in the yard and talked till almost 8! We never seem to get organized enough to get our act together and actually get anywhere on time and in one piece. I need PDR to come do some planning and organizing of my life for awhile... maybe it would rub off. It's a beautiful day and should be up to 70 this afternoon. I love these nice late summer/early fall days. Hope it holds till the 20th... I might run at lunchtime, or I might take another rest day. Once I get that last really long hard run out of the way, I like to take a little break before race day.

I thought of MaineRunnah this morning as I headed south on the Maine turnpike and saw a car with Maine plates "RUNAH" only one "N", but pretty close. I missed the sitting in traffic last night with all the natives sitting on the overpasses waving goodbye to all those from away. it was a glorious weather weekend to end the summer. I wish I could stay on our lake the whole month of September. Kevin

PS Evanflein, what is the Alaska buzz on Sarah Palin? There is a certain irony in her positions on sex education....