Something must have happened to me at the E Murray Todd 1/2 this past weekend.

I went out for my Friday run around 1:30pm. While I had several good bikes & swims, I hadn’t run since the 1/2 mary on Sunday. I still had a lot of nagging soreness in my right arm, shoulder and right calf through out the week. I have a tendency to get sick if I push my workouts too fast after a major effort, and there have been a LOT of sick folks at work. But I really needed to run today, so I figured I would just suck up the soreness and run my usual 1:15 route.

Here is what happened:

Lap time dist avg max
1 8:55 1.00 131 144
2 8:42 1.00 142 147
3 8:30 1.00 143 151
4 8:18 1.00 145 151
5 8:14 1.00 145 149
6 8:33 1.00 147 152
7 4:34 0.54 150 157
8 7:45 1.00 156 161
9 6:57 0.89 162 169
10 4:59 0.58 153 163

Lap 7 is where I started my 15 min acceleration. Lap 9 is where I ended it. Lap 10 was last 5 minutes… 8:21 for 9 miles, AVG HR 147. Solid aerobic pace, Here is the kicker.. It was a SOLID 22 sec/mile faster than I’ve ever run this route for the same level of effort.

At about the 5 mile point today I felt like I was standing on the other side of a brick wall. There was a gaping hole about the same size and shape of my body. At my feet were broken brick and dust. There was a weird glow all around me. I think that’s called a breakthrough. Damn, that felt good.