64 and Counting

February 10, 2013: 64 and Counting.....  19 miles - Maple Lake (4-mile warm-up; 12 mile marathon-paced tempo run - 67:58; 3-mile cooldown);  Here are the splits of the 12-mile tempo: 5:48, 5:41, 5:38, 5:37, 5:40, 5:43, 5:37, 5:34, 5:39, 5:40, 5:41, 5:34.  Miles 1, 5, and 9 are identical as are 2, 6, and 10; 3, 7, and 11; and finally 4, 8, and 12.  I ran 9 laps of a 1.33 mile loop. 
Overall, I'm pretty happy the workout.  This is the 3rd marathon-paced workout that I've done in the past 5 or 6 weeks (I did one before the 12-weeks started).  At the 10-mile mark of this workout I was at 56:42, which is 17 seconds slower than the 10-mile tempo I did two weeks ago.  Going into this workout, I wanted to be between 56:20-56:30 at the 10-mile mark.  However, my legs felt a tad more fatigued in this workout than the last one.  The weather was absolutely perfect.....54 degrees and cloudy with about a 7 MPH wind.   The biggest difference today was that the rolling hill section of the loop felt a little more like rolling mountains.  Although I felt pretty smooth on the flat sections,   my heart rate definitely spiked heading up the 2 steeper hills.  I still enjoyed the workout.  I view these marathon-paced workouts as 'real' practice for Boston as I get a day where I'm grabbing water off of my Waste Management trash can as well as taking gels every 30 minutes or so.  I wanted to take an ice bath in the lake afterwards, but the lake is still frozen over at our end.  I was thinking of getting something to try to break it, but I pressed for time anyway as we had a family commitment.   

Ok, now to the song of the day.  It is of the hip-hop nature (Jesus style :-) )  I think even those that are not fans of hip-hop will find this tune pretty catchy.  If you like hip-hop, I think you will really like it.  This song is a wonderful reminder that our lives belong to Him, and all boasting and/or glory belongs to Him alone.  I believe that God enjoys blessing us, and allows us to experience blessings of this life; but without Him it's all in vain.  When you think about it, we exist because of the grace of God; each breath we take is a gift from God; all of our talents and abilities are gifts from Him;  Every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17). 

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ec7ofMOqVM