Easy day

I ran 3 miles easy with the club this morning. That was all because I am running Sunday. This will be my first 3 in a row in a long time so one of the days had to be very easy.

Monday we're vacating our house for 5 days while the inside is painted and with meetings at work and all, I probably won't be running that day. So it may be Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday next week.

I have been following several of the forums on Cool Running. My friend Jim is on it all the time. I have to stay off of it. I am not as kind as he is to either myself or others. A great deal of reinvention of the wheel goes on there even though the wheel is already rolling around and invented. Still, they are runners and many are much more motivated than I am these days. Jim is going to Paso Robles for the Masters 10K championship. His goal is to break 40 minutes. That is no small thing for a 60 plus runner. His 5K's say "no" but he is a strength runner and get stronger as the race distance moves out. I am going to say he'll be in the 39:50-40:20 range. It depends on how smart he is during the first mile and whether he can hang with the guys who can break 40.

Years back I had the goal of breaking 26 minutes for 5 miles and during the race I hung with the guys who could do it. In the end, I ran 26:12 but it was hard for me to believe I had not done it. Some months later a friend called and told me that he had heard that the course was long. Any course being long is unusual but I had to find out. I recalibrated the club wheel and went out one cold evening when there wasn't much traffic and measured the damn thing.

It was 144 yards long! I had not only broken 26, I had broken 25:50. The next time they ran the race, the course had been shortened by that distance but I didn't get to run it. I had come down with a bad case of the flu and was just recovered enough to go out and watch my good buddy John run it in the 25:20's.

Bottom line: All Jim has to do is hang with those guys (whomever they are).