And the winner is…

So my legs are starting to feel a lot better than they have the last couple of weeks. I have been pretty worried about how the last month of training has gone, what with the weirdness of post-vacation, the ER visit, and the stomach flu. But today my legs actually felt stronger!

Now my lungs on the other hand…

This morning was the 56th annual Moundsview cross country alumni meet. The coaches were nice enough to let me hop in as an honorary alumni to get the first part of my workout done. It is a co-ed race with the boys and girls teams, plus many alumni. When the gun (or rather someone yelling “go!”) went off, I started out strong. I went through the mile in 5:28. Perfect! My goal was to try and break 11 minutes.

But duning that second mile my lungs were burning. I am not used to this fast pace and short races!

Nate went out in a more conservative 5:46 first mile, and fueled by my challenge-in-the-form-of-a-blog-post, was hunting me down during the second mile. With 100m to go he sprinted past me to finish in 11:28. I was one second later in 11:29. Arg!

The Mounds View Mustangs! Boys are ranked 10th in the MN State pre-season poll.

After the race Nate and I cooled down with a couple other “older” alumni, and when the guys left to compete in the 21st annual Alumni-Varsity softball game (the Alumni won), I went out to finish my workout. I did two more 2 mile repeats at threshold, and a total of 18 miles for the morning. The last two repeats were not as fast as I would have liked, but it was good to practice pushing myself without the aid of a pacer. I purposely do a lot of my speed with other people, but it is good to practice out there by myself too.

Now, let’s see how the legs handle tomorrow’s 22 miler! I’m very optimistic. Just give me another week or two to work on the lungs, and I’ll be back. Nate, watch your back 🙂

PS- Kristi, too bad I wasn’t two seconds faster for ya! Nice guess work! The baked good award instead goes to Brian P, who correctly picked Nate as the winner with the closest spread.
PPS- It should be noted that Nate correctly guessed his time, to the second. I’d give him an award for that, but he had the nerve to outsprint me at the line, so… 🙂