Decking the halls

There's Kelly and I, and an almost cooperative Barkley, sitting in front of our condo-friendly Christmas tree shortly after decking the ol' halls here on Sunday night. Every year we put on Christmas music while we decorate and imagine how our kids will be completely embarrassed by us years from now. Always a good time.

Every year, our ornament collections grows as we pick up souveniers from our vacations, family events or my travels. It's tough to see in the above photo, but I added a memento from my first marathon to the tree this year. At the marathon expo in Chicago, I found this ornament that will be a part of my tree from now on:

Anyway, I'm less than a week removed from the half marathon in Las Vegas. If I were only training for the half, I would've tapered this past week or two. Instead, I logged 41 miles this past week and ran a practice 13.1 miles on Sunday, when it was below freezing here with winds that got up to over 30 mph.

For that run, I bundled up and headed out to the Don Valley path. After a two-mile warm-up with splits of 9:02 and 8:21, I did by best to stay between a 7:50-8:20 pace for the next 11 miles. With the exception of a brief walking break that upped mile 7 to 8:31 and a long light at mile 12 that brought that one up to 8:37, I met that goal.

Practice half-marathon splits:

9:02/8:21/7:59/8:02/8:04/8:14/8:31
8:03/8:01/8:02/8:02/8:37/7:51/0:47

total: 1:47:42

So, for the entire run, I averaged 8:13. After the two-mile warm-up, I averaged 8:06. Considering I did this out in the bitter cold weather that I did, I should be able to hit my target of 1 hour, 45 minutes at the Vegas half. Fingers crossed. Doing this 13.1 trial run in 1:47 was pretty encouraging at least.

Prior to that run, I did 10-mile runs on Tuesday (8:17 pace) and Thursday (8:13 pace) and an 8-miler on Friday at an easier pace. The Tuesday run was good simply because I was pain-free during the run after that nasty fall on Sunday. I still have a bruised left knee, some scrapes in a handful of places and a really sore right arm, which I may have landed on.

But, beyond the bumps and bruises, I had no issues when actually running. That's all I'm concerned with right now. This week, I plan on straying some from the program I mapped out in order to rest up and recover some leading up to the Vegas run on Sunday. I'll probably stick to the indoor track to make sure I do shorter distances.

More later...