12 weeks old and 12 miles run

This Sat., Brooklyn turned 12 weeks old!  The time has went by really fast.  I can’t believe she will be three months old on the 19th.  We are reading to her at times.  We have a number of baby books, but I wonder why we have to stick to baby books.  I started reading her Shakespeare and my wife is reading her Marley & me.  The baby books are fun though.

By coincidence, my scheduled run this morning was 12 miles.

Because of “The Hill” at Oakland I wanted to get in a good hill run.  I thought about driving to Oakland and running The Hill, but that takes an hour both ways . . . which means less time with Brooklyn on the weekend.  So I decided to go to Rancho and run up to Black Mountain.  Well, not all the way up, just 6 miles up.  I thought that would give me a good hill workout and would be harder than running “The Hill”

Thanks also for the comments, much appreciated.  I know that I can complete the marathon.  I might not get a sub-4, but I need to stay positive and just do the best that I can.  I mean . . .  I need to just enjoy the experience and challenge of the marathon.

I’m also using Windows Live Writer for the first time. Seems easier than blogger . . . still need to get used to it.  Thank you Aron for your post suggesting it.

I got out to Rancho before 8 am and started my journey up in elevation.  My legs were really tired (it is time to start tapering).  They did not want to get climbing.  I pushed myself really hard this week in my speed workout (10 x 800s, at 7:00 pace, resting pace at 8:34 for .25) and a 5 mile temp run at 7:30 pace, last mile at 6:30 pace.  I did both on the treadmill so I used an elevation up to 2.  The elevation made the workouts harder, but it felt good to complete them.  My legs though still felt the workouts and were tired.  As I was running, I told myself that I need to start tapering to get my legs rested for Oakland.

It was a great day out.  It had rained the night before so some parts were muddy, but not like the 30K race two weeks ago.

I made it to 6 miles and decided to run to the 2K elevation rather than turn around.  I made it to 6.5 miles when I hit 2K elevation.  I noticed that twice I climbed over 500 feet in a mile.  That was great because the Hill climbs 500 feet over 4 miles.  The problem is that going uphill means I go slower.  At the 6.5 mile mark my avg pace was about 10:30, which means getting a sub-4 in Oakland could be very tough.  On the way down I was about to drop my avg pace to 9:25.  It was a tough run, but I’m glad I did it.

Here are some pictures from my run (I had to upload them from blooger, windows live writer would not let me):