Barriers don't exist in this dojo...

So the "I can't break 10 minute miles in a competitive 5K" belief is toast after today. I didn't even move that well, it was raining, and stretching wasn't much of an option because I didn't want to stand out in the rain. I sat in the car until about 10 minutes to the start, but I'm not sure it made a difference, as I was soaked by the first half mile anyway. Anyway, I finished the race at about 29:40. It's just nice to break 10 minuters. I was getting sick of thinking that wasn't going to ever happen, and this is some nice progress, considering the best I had before was a 32:17. Then, going against progress, I grabbed some McD's breakfast on the way home; two McMuffins and 2 hash browns is not going to help things, but I'm still lovin' it.

With the race you got a free ticket to a game and a Spirit shirt. Unfortunately the ticket is for a night that I'm going to Spamalot at the Whiting. Hopefully I can find somebody that wants it. That's too bad, because I love hockey, and I'd be fine going solo. Most people just don't do things like that alone.

Speaking of flying solo, I have to get down to East Lansing to go to the Michigan State game against Notre Dame. It's nasty as hell out, and that's going to make it awesome.

Greasy Fast Speed

So we have the distance thing down for this year, and now it's time to go for speed. I don't really have a chicken to chase around, but Jason is fast enough. I suppose we could always push for a half-marathon and then a marathon, but before I get into something like that I need to drop some weight. That would just be too much abuse on the knees at this point. I suppose the half would be ok, but 26.2 miles, nope.

We missed our run yesterday due to lightning. We'll go in rain, but there's no sense in getting healthy and going out to get killed by a lightning bolt. Sure it's rare, but it could happen, and has happened to people in my family before. Maybe we have high iron in the blood. Who knows?

Anyway, we did the usual trail run, but we did a short one around 4 miles or so pushing hard the whole way. I was just as sweaty as we usually are for 10 with the humidity, and the muscles were just as tired with pushing the whole time and being out of breath for the entirety. It's something I need to do, though, to build up my wind and break that 10 minute mile wall. To do that, I have to take off about 2 1/2 minutes from my better 5K times. It won't be easy, but we'll keep pushing for time, and it should help us in distance too.

The 4 mile run (guessing distance, we still need to confirm) took me 39:40 today. We'll just keep trying for better times.