Training in Montana

5 miles on a cool fall morning. 40 degrees with a slight breeze, 84% humidity as it had rained during the night. Clear skies all around, so the moon was bright, the stars were out, and the Eastern sky warmed during my run. Gorgeous. It was a bit muddy on my first .75 before I hit pavement, but not too bad. I felt pretty good, much better than Saturday, and ran the whole way so that's an improvement. I slept in until 9:15 Sunday morning which helped a lot. Good run, ready for boot camp at lunch.

AP: 8:45

Slept in yesterday and it was very nice. This morning I rolled out of bed and got on the road by 6:10. Beautiful morning. No clouds, half moon directly overhead, stars bright and plentiful. Eastern light very faded. I turned off the headlamp after mile 1 and ran without light the rest of the way. I love where I live.

Legs were tired the first mile, but then warmed up. I thought it was 42 when I started, but there was frost when I drove to work so it must have been in the 30s. Legs warmed up and I felt better. On the way back I got thinking about the Run Turkey Run 5K next month and realized I haven't done any training for it. The last .75 I picked it up and kept it under a 7:00. Averaged a 6:55 for the last mile, and the first .25 I wasn't trying too hard, so I had a good pace. There's a lot of downhill, but I need to get my legs used to turning over that quickly. Going Elk hunting Friday-Monday with my 12 year old and my hunting buddies, so I'll take a running break for a while.

I started exercising (stairmaster) 2 years ago to get in shape for Elk hunting, and when I got back I didn't want to give up my gains, so I started some minor running (I've always been an off and on runner). At the end of that month (November 2009) I watched Biggest Loser contestants run a marathon and realized that if they could do it, I could. I'd wanted to run a marathon since my Dad did St. George in 1987, but I'd never figured out how to do it. That night I determined I would run the DesNews Marathon in 2010 and found Hal Higdon's Novice 1 plan. Interesting how I started this to be a better hunter, and now running has overtaken hunting in importance. Now I run to run, and I hunt because it's a fun thing to do, but I don't spend near as much time thinking about it and planning for it as I do my running. It will be fun, though, and hopefully we'll bring home some meat for the freezer.