Speed, On The Blog And Tightening Up

Friday brings the end of another week, the end of the girls' spring break and hopefully the end of my running rut.

Speed Test: On a whim Thursday, I tried to break my mile time. I didn't set out to run it but I'd run two miles and then figured, why not? I was at a track and since I don't often get to one, so that played into it.

I busted my butt all the way around the track. At times I felt good and at other times, not so good. After two turns around the track I was at about 3:14 so I knew that if I could maintain that blistering pace I could maybe get a new one-mile PR. Well, I didn't quite hold that pace but I finished at 6:47, which I believe is the same time I had the last time I tried (and set) a one-mile PR.

I needed a bounce-back week like this one. Let's hope it culminates well on Sunday as I have 20 miles on the docket.

On The Blogosphere: This week I appeared on two places, although only one was planned. I'd written something about my favorite marathon, the San Francisco Marathon, for Happy Feet, a company that sells insoles and strives to make feet happy. They'd originally asked if I'd blog about the SF Marathon and I said yeah and sent them over something that was both on my weight loss and the marathon, and I'm hoping the whole post makes it on their blog, but in the meantime a snippet of what I wrote, the part on the race itself, ran this week. Read it here.

Also, I recently "met" a new blogger, Melie. She's a local runner and is training for her first marathon, the San Diego Rock n Roll Marathon in June. Now, I've thought about doing this one but it really conflicts with the Camp Pendleton Mud Run so I'll have to do it in a year that there is no such conflict.

Anyway, Melie had asked for some advice about staying motivated and new tips so I suggested she look into intervals, specifically my favorite 42-minute interval. This one kicks my butt every time, still does, and it was one of the first workouts that got me into running. If you'd have told me in late 2007 (when I first saw this) that I'd have to run 42 minutes non-stop on the treadmill, I would have cried. But when I saw this, I realized there was more to running than, well, just running.

So I've used it as my go-to interval workout since. And when I was going to suggest something to Melie, I knew exactly what I'd suggest. She used it, modified it and loved it. And wrote quite a nice post.

The Week In Tweets

As usual, some great running tweets this week.

Hal Higdon (@higdonmarathon )

It's not so much the running that affects your health positively, but the lifestyle changes that often accompany the decision to run.

I love races, but they put extra stress on your body and cost valuable training time. Sometimes it's fun to go long periods without racing.

Bart Yasso ( @bartyasso )

This might have been the best one I've read in a while...

When you get to the starting line,take a minute to think how fortunate you are to be able to run a marathon, both physically & culturally.

Parting Song: Sorry I left you with a cheesy early-90s song on Thursday. I'll try and do better today.

I'm posting this song for the sake of posting a song that will be stuck on your head this fine day. It's a good song. Mrs. LB, though, isn't a fan of this group. I don't have this CD but I need to get it so I can run to this song. It's called Tighten Up by The Black Keys.