November 08

November brought darkness, literally. It was time to change our clocks and for winter to start which meant that the days were much shorter and it was getting colder. I don't have access to a treadmill so runs had to be during the day time as it is too hard and not safe to run in the dark. This made things a bit difficult for planning with work and a family. I did my best to get in as many runs as I could and concentrated on the long runs come the weekend.

I had two races in November. I was heading to Medford for work and thought I would see what they had going on down there. They had the Pioneer 9 miler which was perfect. Not too long and and a chance to work on some speed. A small event in Talent, Or with some fast runners. It was a cool foggy morning and I knew nothing about the course. We started and I just ran. Ran how I felt looking at my splits I realized that I was just cruising along. Ran strong on the uphills and floated down the hills. Tried to keep good form on the flats. After about mile 3 I was alone. And I do mean alone as I didn't even see anyone in front of me and I never looked back and nobody passed me from mile 3 and on. After mile 6 I had a good pace and a good time going. At mile 7 we started to retrace the course from the start and I felt confident with what was left that I could maintain or even pick up the pace. I ran the last 2 miles in 6:16 and 6:07 respectively to finish at 57:44 and a 6:25 pace good for 8th place but 8 minutes off the winner, he's fast. Translate this to a 15k time and you have 59:41 and another PR!

Next up was a 5k Turkey Trot in Springfield, OR. We were heading to my inlaws for the Thanksgiving holiday and the race starts and finishes about a mile from their house. I did the run last year and had fun. This year I had been training, not for a 5k but training, so I went for an aggressive time, a PR basically. I wanted to break 18 mins. Sure enough, 17:58 and a 5:48 pace good for 3rd in my age group and 35th overall. Official results say 18:00 but they don't have chip timing so I was 2 seconds behind the start line when the gun went off. Some really fast runners come to this race. The winner ran 15:20 for a 4:56 pace. At the finish I jogged back to my inlaws got some warm close on and ran the course backwards to catch up with my father inlaw and son Reid. We walked/run togehter back to Nana and Papa's house. A good time by all. The best was I received a ribbon in the mail for my 3rd place in the age group. It had been since grade school that I had received a ribbon, How cool!

Training was not going good. Runs were hard to get in with the weather and no daylight. My long runs were crap and I didn't get in the distance I wanted and felt crappy on most of them. Things were not looking good for CIM but I pushed on and figured worse case I would have a good time hanging out with my best friend for the weekend.

Logged approx. 130