Going Pro! :-)

No, I'm not quitting my day job any time soon, but I did win $50 for being the second master at today's Johnnycake Jog 5 mile race. Kind of cool to lose my prize money virginity so to speak. Not too many guys out there have made $ from both sports and rock 'n' roll. This was one of Ohio's premiere road racing events on the Grand Prix circuit. I was 33rd overall in a deep field full of lots of fast open, high school, and college runners. I didn't feel my best, and the 80F temperature and pea soup like humidity didn't help, but I ran a pretty solid, even paced race hitting 28:42. Splits were: 5:40, 5:55 (big hill), 5:40, 5:43, 5:44. The last mile and a half felt like a death march, but I was able to hold form and finish with good even paced splits, even while feeling like I was about to pass out. All and all I've had a good first half of the year, lowering my 2007 5K PR from 17:22 to 16:57 and my 2007 5 mile PR from 28:53 to 27:51. Over the next six weeks I'm going to take a break from racing and just get back to some good old base building. My plan is to follow a Jack Daniels (the coach not the whiskey!) schedule for the next 4 weeks and build up my mileage with a weekly tempo and repetition workout (economy stuff like 8 x 400 w/400 jog) and then I'll follow the 12 week Pfitzinger 8k/10K program and try to run a kick ass 10K PR on my 44th birthday on Sunday, November 9th at the Ann Arbor Turkey Trot.