20 miles, 20 laps and 4 frogs

Sunday was my first 20 miler for the current marathon training cycle. I went with a group which is good for passing the time, but also extends that time. A group tends to stop more and unless a pace is agreed upon before hand, a goal pace will be changed by the group. I paused my Garmin when we stopped and therefore ended up with an 8:11 overall pace, but am unsure if I could have done that pace without the stops we did. I think this weekend's long run will be done alone so I can see where I'm really at.

With cooler daytime temperatures and darker mornings I seem to be doing more evening runs lately. Thus I found myself heading to a track Tuesday evening a little before dusk for some intervals. 1x1600, 1x3200, 2x800 was the schedule. But I got the schedule mixed up and ended with 2x400 instead of 800. Recovery laps included, I ran 20 laps for a total of 5 miles and felt pretty good.

And the dusk aspect brings us to the frogs. I started seeing one or two hopping about the track lanes as it got darker. My wife and three kids were with me and at first they were catching lightning bugs. But once they saw the frogs they started catching those instead. They each had one, including a baby frog for my youngest. They carried them to a lighted area and were watching them hop around. Then we put them back into the grass and went home for chocolate milk. A fun end to a good workout.