What ever it takes!

Pretty crazy workout, I feel like I got away with something.  At least I hope I did.  Decided to go get reacquainted with the ol' treadmill this morning.  I wanted to show my legs what it felt like to run fast downhill so I tested out the decline feature on the treadmill.  Ran a 1 mile warmup at 7:00 pace and then set the treadmill to -1.5 and went to 5:50 pace, bumped up the speed every 2 miles.

Felt really good from a cardio standpoint,  legs were really the only thing complaining but I actually feel like I could have kept going at that pace if I had to.  Luckily I didn't.

Distance	Time	Avg Pace	Incline
1	7:03	7:03	0%
2	12:51	5:48	-1.5%
3	18:34	5:43	-1.5%
4	24:17	5:43	-1.5%
5	29:57	5:40	-2%
6	35:33	5:36	-2%
7	41:09	5:36	-2%
8	46:42	5:33	-2.5%
9	52:12	5:30	-2.5%
10	57:34	5:22	-2.5%
Total	57:35	5:45	- 2%

My Cyclist friend got this shirt just to wear in front of me.  I was running so fast I felt like I was a criminal today.  I'm not sure why there was money in the garbage can.

Decided to take a real recovery day, pretended I had a stress fracture.  45 minutes on the Elliptical, 30 minutes of weights and stretching.  Now I'm sitting at the airport waiting to fly to San Francisco.  Weather looks perfect there, I'm pretty excited to run there it's one of my favorite places to train for 2 weeks.

################### 4 hours later ########################

Well, I had an inkling something like this might happen.  Our shipment was delayed so the amount of work we were able to do today was minimal.  Which means double work tomorrow.  

One thing I have always wanted to do in San Francisco is run across the Golden Gate bridge and run in the Golden Gate National Park but from downtown across the bridge and back is an 18 mile round trip in itself which always put it out of reach.  Today I decided to take a taxi to the bridge run across it and run the trails in the park.  I told my co-worker Jeff this plan and he thought it sounded fun as well.  Problem is the furthest he has ever ran is 6 miles and he's fairly slow.  Oh well I can't really tell him no, so we both went, I ran with him across the bridge and then told him I was going to explore and to meet back in 1 hour.  I took a road down to the beach which dead ended, and realized I took a wrong turn so I headed back up the mountain to the top. (2000 ft of elevation gain in 3 miles), from the top the views were amazing, the place would be a trail runners paradise. I took a few picture and head back down, met Jeff on the bridge and finished crossing with him for a total of 10 for me and 8 for him, he said he was done and took a taxi back, I opted to run back for an extra 6 slow miles.

My legs are completely trashed, I took an ice bath when I got back to the hotel.  Great run, I wish I could have been a little bit more fresh, and wish I would have know my way around better but it was fun non the less.

16.2 miles in 2:10:00  ~8:00 min/mile avg.

10 slow miles on a chilly yet gorgeous morning here in San Francisco.  Ran down Market to the Embarcadaro around passed Fishermans Warf, over Fort Mason to Crissy Field then back. 

Tons of runners out this morning.

11.5 miles due to bad math, apparently my hotel is 1/4 mile closer to the Embarcadaro than last year so my runs are a 1/2 mile short.

Cool, Breezy morning.  I got an early start cause we are really behind on work since our shipment didn't get in until 3:00pm yesterday.  Ran the same route as yesterday except I went a mile further and ran back faster.  Threw in an impromptu 5 mile tempo run coming back just to get back quicker.  ~6:25 avg pace on Tempo.

11.5 mile 1:20:23  6:53 avg pace.

It seems that the 3 - 4 week out from marathon day is very stressful, at least it is for me.  I feel like this is my last chance to add any extra bit of fitness I can before the race, but it also seems like an injury is lurking if I push it to hard.  It's such a game of balance.

Made sure I went an extra 1/2 mile to get my even 12 in for the day, just kind of ran this morning, wasn't really sore or tired just for some reason didn't have a lot in me.  I did have to do a couple of sprints coming back up Market to get through intersections but other than that just a easy steady pace.

12 miles in 1:26:50  7:14 avg pace.

I told myself I wouldn't run further than 12 miles while I was in "Show mode" but I actually got a pretty decent night sleep last night and felt really good this morning,  I thought it might be my last chance to run across the Golden Gate Bridge.  I woke up a bit earlier and was out the door at 4:37.  Ran to the visitor center on the far side of the bridge in 1:01:00, running on the bridge at 5:30 is really surreal, It's pretty amazing how the fog just kind of sits over the bridge,  completely silent except for the Fog Horns going off every minute or so.  It's a pretty amazing experience.  Made the return in 56 minutes, 5 minute negative split over 8.5 miles.

Busy work day now,  I'll probably take tomorrow off.

17 miles in 1:57:00  6:52 avg pace.