76 miles

First, congratulations to Lee, Rose and other the other HTC/Brickyarders at the Race in the Park. Awesome times and great photos.

I had originally planned to run a small 5K in Barkhamstead on Saturday since it is near my home town. However, I woke up and we had thunder, lightning, and heavy rains. I was not sure if a small race like that would still be held under such conditions, so I made it a training weekend instead.

Sat am I ran 10 miles northbound on the trail to the Massachusetts border. Despite the thunder and lightening, I actually saw 9 other runners out there, which is about 8 more than I would have seen in the pre-economic downturn days. Are we in the fourth running boom?????

In the afternoon it cleared up a bit and took the beutiful Cannondale Synapse carbon bike I purchased for a song at the end of last season out for a 34 mile ride.

I followed that up this am with a very windy, and cold 25 miler. Several times, I was blown off course but luckily the wind did not blow me completely over. Next was a 6 mile interval run. And when the pool opened this afternoon I swam a little over a mile. I think that all adds up to about 76 miles.

This was all in preparation for the Rev 3 Half Ironman on June 6, which I am registered for but severly untrained. I am thinking now with a couple of solid weeks I could probably finish. So I'm going to plan on doing just that, going out nice and slow and doing my own thing. The race looks to be heavily dominated by Pros, so I'm just going to concentrate on my own thing and not get blown off course!! We shall see what happens.

Anyway, here are some other misc tidbits:

Summer racing- have been looking around at Hi-Tek Racing, New England Runner, and HTC calendars. Think I've got a good schedule mapped out for the summer, including a few favorite races that are not usually heavily advertised:

Brodie Park Run around the Lake, May 29

Space Race 5K- pretty cool, you run right on the tarmac around airforce jets at Bradley Airport. Flat and fast, July 17

Corporate 5K in Hartford, August 12 6:30 pm

Lobster Loop 5 K, Canton August 15- has good vibes for me, since it goes through the neighborhoods where I grew up

People's Forest 7 miler- Trail run, used to picnic there with my parents when I was young, good memories

Holcomb Farm 10k- probably won't run given that the Tri is the next day, but may go and volunteer at this hilly run in Granby

Litchfield Hills Olypmic Dist Triathlon August 22

Granby 5K Sept 19th- goes through my current neighborhood

**Highland Lake 10k- goes around Highland Lake in Winsted. This was actually my intro to running, my mother was designing the race T-shirt and I guess I'm a sucker for adversising. As a 14 year old kid, I trained and raced this event, my fist race ever 26 years ago!!!!!

Training ideas-
In breif, I am eating a fully organic and vegetarian diet. No processed foods, no chemicals, dyes, artificial sweeteners, ect. and feeling great.
Will keep up on the stretching. I am going to try and follow a1/2 marathon training program this summer from the book Training Plans for Multisport Athletes by Gail Burnhart. Instead of doing interval training at 90%MHR as I have done in the past, I am going to concentrate on doing my faster runs at just below threshold pace hoping to complete more and longer intervals in a given session. I'm also going to keep up with the kettlebell training and stretching to see if a little in season strenght and flexibility helps me out.

Looking ahead-

Hoping the group can be together on Saturday morning. I think about half the group will be at the Newington 5K, and the other half at the Avon 5K.

Hopefully everyone's injuries start to improve, and we can all have a great spring and summer of running.

Thanks to everyone from the Brickyard/HTC group, I love hearing the race reports, running with such great peopele: you are all very inspiring.