You never slow down, you never grow old

7.0 miles on Mt. Greylock's Cheshire Harbor Trail for a nice New Years Day hike!  Beautiful day for a hike, hit some nice ice towards the top and got to do a little sliding on our butts to get down!  So much fun and other than a little soreness in my knees on the way down, no pain after the 20 miler yesterday.

rest day! packing up and heading back to Boston...with my new super fancy hiking camelback!  yippie!!

I knew it was going to be way too cold today for a quick run outside so I didn't even bother attempting it....it would have taken me longer to get dressed than I was going to run.

Did a little over 6 miles on the treadmill, first 3 at 8:00 pace and 0.5% incline then cranked the incline up to 15% and hung back at a 15:00 pace for a mile then went back to the 0.5% incline and 8:00 pace for another mile then did the last mile switching from 8:00 to 6:40 pace back and forth for something to do....

5 miles on the treadmill at the gym before heading to volleyball... Man I love when people, especially new years resolution gym goers, try to treadmill race me!  I am going to crush you!!!!!

mile 1- 7.5mph (8:00 pace)

mile 2- 7.7mph (7:47 pace)

mile 3- 7.9mph (7:35 pace)

mile 4- 7.7mph (7:47 pace)

mile 5- 7.5 mph (8:00 pace)

Finished with .15 miles at 6:19 pace

 Felt really good in my new shoes....decided to get this pair in a size 12 (half size bigger than I have been running in in this shoe) and they feel so much better!!!  I really felt like this workout flew by and I could have pushed it a lot harder but I had to go to volleyball right after it for 5 25 minute co-ed 4's games and I didn't want to kill myself! 

1 month till the marathon!!!

Wasn't much to do at work today since our robots are down so I decided to hit the gym for a quick ride on the bike.... 30 minutes on level 8 for 9.11 miles then a tiny bit of abs and a little stretch.

Longest long run of training...24 miles....tomorrow!  

What the heck is going on!?!?!?!  60 degrees in Boston on January 7th?!?!?!  Unheard of!!!  So I obviously overdressed for this run so I slid my shirt sleeves up and now I have a fantastic tan line right across the middle of both of my forearms!  Crazyness.....but I love it!!!!!!

So my Nike+ somehow stopped recording somewhere around 16 miles for about 1/2 a mile which I only realized because I was taking Gu chomps every mile and a half at that point and I knew I had run more than .15 miles since 16.5 mile chomp I noticed it was in pause mode...bummer!  So it says I ran 23.42 miles in 3:16:15 but since I did an out and back with 12.02 miles as my halfway and I google pedometered it....I know it was 24 miles.  What it did track gives me an average pace of 8:23.

Anyway so the run was pretty good, did it on the Minuteman trail, which was really busy today with such wonderful weather, and apparently is only about 11 miles long...I didn't really think to look at where it ended so when I got to the end and still had about a mile to go to hit my halfway point, I took to the roads and ran to the middle school in Bedford before turning around and getting back on the trail.  My knees ached quite a bit but other than that and wishing I had a little more water with me, it was about as good as I would expect to feel running 24 miles!  Walked a bit after finishing and then jumped in the tub full of cold water for 20 minutes!