It's hard to imagine fall when the temps are in triple digits, but there are subtle signs. This is my first autumn on the Central Coast and I was surprised to see apples at the farmer's markets already. But the leaves are starting to change on the grapevines and the poison oak is bright red! I'm very careful to not brush against it when running in the country, but it grows awfully close to the road.

We rode 30 miles last Saturday and the temperature was 50 degrees at the start. I'm embarassed to say I was freezing! I wore shorts and a cap sleeve top, but I also had arm warmers and a wind jacket on. And fingerless gloves. I left the arm warmers on for two hours, until it finally got warm enough to take them off.

Arm warmers are a clever thing that bicyclists invented, but they're good for runners, too. Another crossover is Nuun, electrolyte replacement tablets. I can't get Ultima at my local store, so I've switched to Nuun and really like it. How handy for long races--all I have to do is drop a tablet into my water bottle when I refill. It's a lot easier to carry.

The temperature was a little warmer for Sunday's 11 miler. I wasn't taking any chances and wore a short-sleeve shirt and a long sleeved pullover. I ditched the pullover within 5 minutes; it was much warmer than I thought.

Sunday's long run was tough! It was Bunny and me, and we started out pretty fast. We followed the same route as last week's 9 miler, but added a couple of miles. The run was pretty hilly, although we had about a half mile of a good downhill. I "flew" down, but realize I need to improve my hill form. I made the same mistake at Nike in San Francisco and my knee let me know it. My average pace for this "long, slow distance" was 11:47mm, with the mile splits ranging from 11mm to 12:20. We ran/walked 6:1.

Registration is open for the Big Sur marathon. I want to sign up, but am, quite frankly, chicken. The six hour cut-off is serious and I made the mistake of reading my 21 miler race report. I guess it shouldn't matter if I don't get a medal, or a finish time; the finish should be its own reward. I did so badly in San Diego, that my confidence is shaken. I want to do a spring marathon, I'm just not sure Big Sur is the right choice. I'll see how the half marathon goes.

SD and I will be going to Tokyo in a little over a week and I'm concerned about my training. I looked up places where I can run, but Tokyo is 16 hours ahead of California time, so I don't know how quickly I'll get over the jet lag. We'll only be gone for a week, but I'd like to continue my track workouts and long runs. There's a track in Central Tokyo that I can run on (gotta love the Internet!), so that will be good.

This will be my second trip to Japan, but the first time as a runner, so it will be nice to add another country to my running memories. In my spinning class, the instructor has a section that she calls seven hills, and it reminds me of Lisbon. Maybe someday I'll be one of those people who travels to foreign countries to run marathons! :-)

Every Day's A Speed Day

...when you run with people faster than you.

I've started training for the Big Sur half and my goal is to run faster. To achieve that end, I'm dabbling in speed training. My training partner, whom I'll call Bunny, and I run around the track every Tuesday. The track is good, because she's so much faster than I am and this way she doesn't have to wait up. Bunny is also training for Big Sur.

Wednesday is a recovery run and Friday is a tempo run. Today was the first time we actually tried tempo running. We ran with the beginners group for almost 3 miles to warm up, then picked up the pace. Since we were on a trail, I told Bunny to wait for me at the end. We were aiming for 20 minutes of tempo, but only did 14 minutes. But what minutes: average pace was 6.4 mph, with a maximum of 7.6! I was running 11:36 min/mile for the warmup and I thought that was challenging. I guess I'll have to stop referring to myself as a 13 minute miler. :-)

Our long runs are on Sunday, but they are only long and slow for Bunny. Last Sunday we ran 9 miles at 11:49 m/m. Another woman joined us, but she's more Bunny's speed, and they're both so competitive I just let them go. They didn't get too far away, as a courtesy to me, but I need to get people more my speed to run with us.

Last Saturday, SD and I rode 43 miles with the store group. We didn't expect to be riding that far, but we were following the leader. She was gauging how we looked; unfortunately she didn't know I had a nine mile run planned for the next day. Our longest distance before that had been 26 miles, so it was quite a jump in miles and the back of my knees were sore for three days! SD got a flat tire--his rear tire--so now he knows what to do. The store owner helped him fix it. Hopefully, he'll be around in case I ever get a flat, since they were on the freeway when it happened and I was waiting at the exit. Anyway, it's nice to know I can ride that far. SD and I are going to sign up for a 50 mile ride, which occurs in October.

I haven't been keeping current on my blog or reading yours. Sorry. No excuses, I just haven't been able to keep up. But there are a few races that deserve a shout out. First, AmyBee and Nat competed in their first half-Ironman on August 17! You can read Amy's race report here.

And Donald recently ran his first 100 mile endurance race! He wrote a fabulous race report.

AmyBee has a triathlon coming up this weekend, and Donald is competing in a half-Ironman, also this weekend. Good luck to them and all of you who are racing this weekend.