I've been feeling TOTALLY apprehensive about the LA Triathlon that I've stayed away from the swimming pool ALL WEEK LONG! You can call it taper, but really, I should have been doing drills, a couple of laps here and there, and just getting used to the water once again. I've done 600 meters in TWO WEEKS! What's wrong with me?!??! I'm so nervous.

It wasn’t as hot as it was last Thursday. Actually, it was close to 10 degrees cooler. Around 80. So I decided to put in a 10K run. Jake was at Piano, Bella was at “Lala’s” and I was home from a shitty day at work. I slipped on the shoe of choice, my Brooks Adrenaline GTS 6, which by the way felt AWESOME!. I grabbed a 10.5 ounce and a 20 ounce water bottle and tried out my new Amphipod Full Tilt Velocity fuel belt. I started at 4:22 PM. Before I knew it I was at the 2 mile mark. My splits were kinda fast for the first two miles which hurt me on mile 4 and 5… But that’s later. My goal was a 10K run but instead of my normal Verdugo out and back, I decided to “PinBall” it as I call it. This meant I’d run and try to find shade on a flat course through Glendale. If I hit a red light I’d “PinBall” in a direction where I could run without running the red. I’d do this going out for 3.1 miles then work my way back. So this is what I call a “PinBall” run. It led me through to Brand Blvd, Central Avenue, back to Brand and as I got to Glenoaks I hit a red and HAD to stop. If I PinBalled I would have been going away from home and I was not going to give my legs hell by doing a ‘long run’ for the week. That would be bad with a Tri coming up. I was just past the 5K mark and thought a 30 second rest would do me good. I hit STOP on the Garmin and waited for the light. The final 5K had a course where there was no lights! Just stop signs and a couple of little hills that really got my heart rate up to the high 190s. I knew it going up and I struggled through it but made it. It was a challenging mile 4 going on Mountain Blvd heading home. Mile 5 meant I was in the final stretch run home. And if mile 4 was hard, mile 6 was harder. I stepped it up and averaged a 9:17 (my 5K average pace) and tried desperately to let it fly with .2 miles to go. That little 2/10ths of a mile final stretch seemed like a never ending run. I was huffing and puffing and really ran through it as hard as I could but only managed a 9:36 pace for that little sprint. Here are my splits: SPLITS Mile 1 0:08:59 Mile 2 0:09:05 Mile 3 0:10:09 Mile 4 0:10:13 Mile 5 0:10:45 Mile 6 0:09:17 Mile 6.2 0:01:53 Total: 01:00:21 Not bad at all. I was hoping an under 60 minute run… 21 seconds over is something I can make up the next time. Google Earth is awesome by the way. I uploaded my run into MotionBased then saved the data and viewed it on Google Earth. I copied it and pasted it into Photoshop and marked the mile marks. Check it out: I marked the mile marks 1…2… etc. And the Start (S) and Finish (F) 6.2 miles. Then I went out to eat pasta with Dale, Dasie, Liza, Debbie (from Dallas), Jake and Colby. It was yum.