Training "PR"

I have a 10K route that I use to run to and from work quite a bit. It's rolling in both directions, but going home, there is a net uphill of over 500 vertical feet, most of that in the last 2.5 miles. Yesterday, I ran to work in a typical time of just over 61 minutes. Last night, I planned to do a little bit of tempo on the way home, if my legs felt OK.

Just after the 1.5 mile mark, and just after an uphill, I started to push the pace a little bit. I didn't pay close attention to my pace, but I'm sure I wasn't as fast as in my tempo work last week. When I got to the uphill where I intended to stop the tempo work, I realized that I had a chance to run faster on the way home than I ever had before.

Now, to be perfectly honest, most days that I run home I've already run to work on the same route. It's usually done for endurance rather than time. I often walk almost all of the hills in the last 2.5 miles. On occasion, I'll run all of the hills, but my pace is ridiculously slow.

I wasn't sure what my fastest time was in the homebound direction, but I knew I'd never gone under an hour. I checked my logs later and my fastest time was only 61:30, so clearly I'd never really pushed hard the whole way. Normally, it takes me 68 or so minutes to run home.

Yesterday, when I got to the start of the real uphills, I decided to keep working a bit. It still took me 12:14 to do mile 5, but that mile included the two toughest hills. At the end of mile 5, it looked like I could go under an hour. I pushed a bit more and ended up with a total of 57:53. My total time for the day was just over 2 hours. Considering the 50K I had run only 4 days prior, I was very happy with my running yesterday.

This morning, I lifted as scheduled, although I was a bit tired. Tonight, I'll head out with the dogs, and either walk or run, depending on how my legs feel.

Starting next week, I'll get to do one run per week on the bike path along Lake Champlain in Burlington. I have logged many miles on that path, most of them when I was working in Burlington from 2001-2006.

Some consulting work that I've been doing has now morphed into a part-time job. I'm going to continue at my current job, but drop to 4 days per week. Then, I'll be working for a small start-up company for 16 hours per week, including one day in their offices at the University of Vermont. The new part-time job will pay me as much for 16 hours per week as my current job will pay for 32 hours per week. Financially, it would have been tough to say no to that kind of offer. The part-time work is related to diabetes care and management, which is similar to part of my current job.

With the cost of our upcoming vacation to CA and the fact that our house needs a new roof this summer, the extra money will certainly be welcome.