In case you didn’t read the title, my third goal is to get faster. I’ve always just accepted the fact that I’m a middle/back of the packer. Even in high school I wasn’t very fast. Some of my best cross-country times were at an 8 minute mile pace. I never did track either, which might have helped me speed up. Instead, I did diving. I mean, running sprints vs. chilling by the pool? Really. C’mon.

So goal #3 (and my last goal for now) is to get faster. I’m pretty sure it’s possible. I don’t expect to win any races, or speed up to a 5 minute mile or anything, but it would be nice maybe to qualify for the Boston Marathon some day. Speed might also help improve my ultra-distance times. I mean, I shuffle along in distances longer than 26 miles, but if I my natural, base speed was faster, then wouldn’t I shuffle faster too?

If you’ve been reading past posts, you know I don’t do well with structure, especially when it comes to training plans. I try to use them as guidelines, but I mostly just do my own thing. So although I am going to try harder to hit some specific mileage by attempting to follow a training plan for my next 50 miler, I don’t have any specific plan to increase my speed. I will, however, incorporate speed work with tempo runs, fartleks, and the occasional sprinting intervals that I kinda make up on the spot. The idea will be to do 2 days of some kind of speed work a week. I think that is something that I can stick to.

Since running my first 50 miler last Saturday, I’m taking a week off from running to just relax. I did a little gym workout today (walk 15 minutes, row 10, bike 30) and my muscles are feeling good. I wanted to run, but I know my knees are going to take awhile to recover and I want to play it safe.

I have no interesting pictures of my day, so I’ll leave you with 3 relaxing photos and one random cute kid pic.

Tony's nephew. Can you tell he dresses himself?

To all the runners out there: How do you recover/reward yourself after a big race?