Running With LeMire

this weekend I didn't have a group run to go to & Jamie had to work Saturday morning at 9am so I decided to take Jacob to hockey and help coach. After hockey I picked Nathan up at the neighbors and the boys chilled out the rest of the day therefore not getting a run in. Since I didn't run Saturday I felt guilty so I got out of bed and put in 10 miles. I kind of made up my route as I went this morning and even ended up getting a few miles on a gravel frontage road. I always dread long runs of greater than 6 miles by myself but today the time and miles flew by at a 7:21/mi average. Overall I think I had a successful run and ran faster then I thought I would solo. Right now 4 weeks into my training program I am running average mile paces faster then lasted 4 weeks in and I have 1 mile more ran in those weeks. It looks like I should have a good training session if I can stay healthy. It would be awesome if at the end I could be running my daily miles at 7:00 per mile like back in the college days.

Ran 6 miles this afternoon since I had MLK day off. IT was a pretty good run considering I did not really prepare for an afternoon run. I ate lunch at 11:30 and was still burping the Pei Wei I ate at lunch 4 miles into the run. I also spent 12:30 -2:00pm at Open skating with Jacob. It was definitely a fun and busy day but I still managed to run those 6 at a 7:21/mi pace. Not super fast but but a pretty good clip after a busy day and 10 mile run at that pace yesterday.  

Ran 6 miles this morning before work. Jamie worked to 10pm last night so I did not get to bed early at all and my 5:30am alarm clock came way to fast. I was definitely a little groggy at the start of this run and my legs felt pretty good considering the last two days of running, skating and everything else I did at home. This definitely was not my fastest run but it felt good to slow it down a bit. I averaged 7:58/mi. but my first mile was 8:58 so that really hurt the overall average. 

Easy 4 miles this morning before work at a pretty slow pace.

6 miles on the treadmill this morning because Jamie had to be at work by 6am for inventory. I ended up running this with a 2x4 under the back of the treadmill to help with preperation of the downhill portions of the Boston course so that once I'm passed Heartbreak hill my legs can handle the next couple of miles downhill into Boston. This method of training worked for me last year so I have been trying to incorporate all or most of my treadmill miles. There was absolutely no pain in my right shin this morning.

This was a fun day and a complete estimate on the overall mileage.

We headed up to Brookings South Dakota for the first ever Jim Emmerich/Alumni Invitational in the brand new Indoor track facility at South Dakota State. When I was at school we were DII and now they are a full fledged DI program with the facilities to support that program! It was an amazing facility to walk into comparied to the old indoor facility we practiced at back in the early 2000's. The meet hosted 8 teams, the alumni mile and 4x300meter relay and a Little Jackrabbit 60 meter dash. The alumni mile was the 4th event following the Little Jackrabbit 60m dash that both of my boys participated in and ran great! I followed the 2.5 year old down the track and there was a great crowd of approximately 400 people watching not counting the athletes. The LEMIRE Boys represented well and had a blast.

Alumni Mile was quite the field with 24 alumni toein the line ranging from just out of college to 50 years old. Majority of the field was 30-34 years old with a handfull of 24-27 year olds and some 40 year olds that still have wheels. This field held one Olympian the SDSU Mile record holder and multiple DII All-Americans. I knew the race would go out fast and it being a 300 meter track the race is 5.33 laps around the track. The first 100m I went out in 18 seconds and was 10 meters behind majority of the field.  That was an oh shit moment and I thought what did I get myself into! I felt stronger and thankfully my strategy was opposite of most and I continued at my pace and passed people on every lap. I was about halfway around the track when the leaders hit the bell lap started and I pick it up even more because I didn' want to get lapped. I passed one of the older guys with 300 to go and then was gaining on a kid 7 years younger than me. As I hit his shoulder and I was pushing it to try and pass him with a little authority he layed down a 150meter kick that dropped me like I was standing still. DAMN 26 year old YOUNG LEGS!! I finished strong gaining on people with every lap and if this was a 3,000 meter race I think I would have finished pretty high up there but I still managed 13th out of 24 in a 5:21 mile. Not to shabby and most important is that I didn't get hurt in the firstrace of the day. Afterwards I felt as if I could have ran harder but I was definitely satisfied with that time.  

Next up 4x300 meters with just under 2 hours of rest. Now this was interesting because it's been awhile since I put two hard efforts in like that in on the same day. The alumni group met up and divided up into 5 relay teams and some young guns that just graduated put together a team that completly dimolished the other 4 teams. I spent a good portion of this time running around the track with the guys catching up and cooling down from the mile. Then after about a half hour of that we sat around and caught up with everyone. Sitting there the hamstrings started to tighten up which was a little worry some. We then warmed up as a group again and got ready to try and run as fast as possible. I ended up running a 47 second split of the relay which was not the slowest on my team but was not the fastest either. It was definietly funny to see all of these old guys running around this brand new track facilityand fun to see the young guns benefiting from the dollars donated to SDSU by Alumni. This facilty was constructed in most part by Alumni donations and yes I donated money for it and am proud to have done so and make SDSU a better place to run and attend school!