My first run of this training week was a 2x1mi speedwork session. I was aiming to do those two miles in about 7:54. I didn’t look at my Garmin during the speed miles and somehow I managed to go under my goal pace to 7:37 and then 7:39. So it seems I can do speedwork at or faster than goal pace but not tempo runs. I have no idea what this means. In the end I paid for the effort with tight/sore hamstrings for the next few days. I did a warm-up mile and some light stretching but I guess it wasn’t quite enough before picking up the pace. I’ll have to do better at that as the number of repeats increase.

Sunday’s long run took me back to part of the Lake Washington / McGilva / Galer / Madison / Interlaken section of the Seattle marathon course (approximately miles 19-23 on the course). That’s my plan for dealing with the late Seattle hills: specificity training. I’m going to run the hills every week I can and hopefully by the time the race rolls around they won’t seem so daunting or so big! This week I made it until mile 12-13 before my legs started to seriously protest. The thought of blueberry/banana pancakes got me through the last mile! I was pretty much toast for the rest of the day though. I napped “Allison style” for about 2 hours in the afternoon. Then I spent the rest of the day watching the last day of the Olympics including the men’s marathon which was very exciting. CBC had great coverage and of course, since I’m on the West coast, NBC pretended they were showing it “live” a few hours later.