I ran 7 miles early in the morning on Sunday. Then, in the afternoon, we went to see real alligators in the wild in Santee National Wildlife Refuge (an we did!). We hiked a 2 mile loop trail in the swamp. There was barely any shadow, mostly in the sun, with the temperature is in the 80s, and I carried Flora (my 2 year old daughter) in the backpack style child carrier for most of the hike. I was OK. My legs are still a bit heavy today, but I don't mind it.

I started to run to cross the marathon off my bucket list, but I'm glad I did, because running keeps me sane in my very stressful everyday life.

Speaking about having easy runs... I guess I'm back to the good old "increase of mileage" days. I'd been looking forward my rest day yesterday. I'm better today, but I'm supposed to run a 5K race test (not an actual race, but I'll run it like I would race). It won't be easy.

BTW it tuns out that the friend's son will run that charity 5K I had considered - because his other program fell through, and he though I would run it (he didn't know I changed my schedule). What a mess. I feel sort of bad, but now I have registered for my 10K and it would be just too much racing to do both. Unless I run it as training. But paying $20 for a training doesn't seem like a good deal. However it's a charity run. Still, I'm not made of money... We'll see.

I signed up for a 10K charity race on May 9. I will skip the 5K. The 5K was originally suggested by friend, and I thought he would run it, too, so I thought it would be fun. It turns out he didn't even consider running it - it is beyond my understand why he asked me "Will you come to that race?"

As you know, I never raced on 10K before, and it sounds a little intimidating. You can't run a 10K with power, like a 5K. I have a feeling that it is a completely different kind of a race. We will see. Nice thing, that it is in Columbia (our fair city).

I do see some improvement in my running. 3 miles is truly easy for me now and even the 6 miles on Sunday was fairly easy to run. I never really have soreness any more, either. The day after the long run felt like any regular day.

In the weekend we attended an Easter party, and we started to talk about running. It turned out, that the host and her family have been devoted runners for some 30 years.

"So how long are your long runs?" she asked.
"I'll run 6 miles today" I replied.
"What is your pace?"
"I do my long runs at 9 minutes per mile."
After a short pause she said: "Come on, you can run faster, can't you?"

Well, I certainly can, but this is supposed to be my long run pace, and I can't really run too much faster if I need to complete 6 miles.

I guess it is good to be reminded occasionally that I'm not a great runner, before my ego grows too large.

I've silently started training for a half marathon, and things are going OK. I changed the way I run tempo according to Hal Higdon's advice. I start at 8:55 min/mile for a mile, then start to accelerate for 1.5 miles, so that the last half mile of that portion is covered in 3:42 or so. Then I decelerate for 1 mile, and at the end of that I am supposed to slow down to my comfy 8:55 m/m speed. Then I coast home (half mile). This is 4 miles and I cover it in 32-34 minutes.

One thing that is still weird for me that I find it quite hard to run the fastest part. Even though I should only maintain the 7:25 m/m speed for 1/2 mile, which should be easy, as I ran significantly faster my whole 5 miler race less then 2 weeks ago. But somehow there is a big difference between training and race. I am a little worried about my half marathon in June: it won't be a race: I will run it alone, against the clock. Will it feel like a race, or training?

My time goal for the HM should be around 1:40, according to the scientific training time projections, but those are based on my race times, not on my training times. So if it will be like training, I will be probably closer to 1:50. So my goal is now just set loosely to 1:40-1:50. Even 1:50 should be generously sufficient partial result for a 4-hour marathon goal.

I must have screwed up something badly yesterday. My first post race run was an "easy" 3-miler, and boy, it did *not* feel easy. These are the potentially bad things I did:

- I ate too much for dinner. (I went to run at around 10pm.)
- I had a coffee just before my run. (BTW, I hate coffee with sugar, but since I've taken up running I got into the habit of eating two teaspoons of brown sugar before drinking my afternoon/evening coffee.)
- I skipped too much training because of the race. I didn't run the two days before the race and I skipped two days after that for recovery.
- I skipped too little training before I got back to it.
- I rode my bicycle too hard on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday, I rode hard, because I thought I would use my commute as cross training. After all I didn't do any physical activity on Sunday, except for some easy hiking with my family. On Tuesday, I was sort of late from work in the morning, and I felt like pushing a little bit in the afternoon.
- I ran too fast. I covered the 3 miles in 26:07. I was supposed to do in 27 minutes.

I also used my new Asics shoes but that is very unlikely to have caused any problem. This is not my first run in these: I run 5 miles before yesterday in these shoes and that went absolutely fine. I really do like these shoes except for two minor things. The first is that it has a little arch support, even though it is advertised as a neutral shoe. This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but I'm not used to supporting shoes, and so running in one makes me feel like I overpronate. I know I don't, and I have to consciously watch myself so that don't try to compensate it. The second problem is the sizing: number 8 is too small, 8.5 is slightly too large for me. I settled with the 8.5, but it is not a perfect fit. But otherwise, these are good shoes.