20K!

We officially topped the $20,000 mark over the weekend. Unbelievable. I really can't thank everyone enough for every single donation. One of the last things that I want to happen is for people to feel like their donation isn't enough if they can only afford to give five or ten dollars. Really, any amount is welcome. Every single dollar matters. Going forward, the other thing that I am kind of unsure of is the amount of the goal. Obviously, if we would have raised $100 this would have been a success. Anything on top of what we have done so far is gravy. We're probably five levels past gravy, whatever that is. What I don't want to happen is to raise the goal to $25,000 and us to fall short and have people feel like we didn't meet our goal. This has been a success beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I really have no idea how many more donations there are out there right now. The plus side would be if we were really close to the goal with a couple weeks remaining, we could all push a little more to those people further down the contact list to help us get there. So, I'd like to hear from the readers in the comment section who you feel. You do not have to leave your name if you do not want to. Just simply click on "0 comments" or whatever the number may get up to and share your thoughts. Thank you again.
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So, I ran a 6 miler on Friday morning at an 8:28 pace on a goal of 8:31. That was one of my worst runs of training so far. Some days, you just don't have it. I didn't Friday morning, but got through it and was able t0 beat the goal by 3 seconds per mile.

This morning, I had a 16 miler on the schedule. Again the goal pace was an 8:31. As you may recall, the first two longer runs were kind of struggles where I finished slower than the goal pace. I headed out just after 8 today and had a pretty good run. I came in at 2 hours, 14 minutes and 45 seconds, good for an 8:25 pace. I had a little more energy over the last 3-4 miles, so I was really happy with the run.

Three weeks are now officially complete and I am looking forward to week 4. I scale back down to 32 miles for the week. The only special run for the week is something called Yasso 800s (explanation of Yasso's to follow). I typically do my speedwork on Wednesdays, but because this week is a week where I cut back overall mileage a bit, I think I will push them to Sunday. Plus, it's supposed to be really hot mid-week.

So here's the schedule for the week:
Tuesday: 8 Miles @ 8:31
Wednesday: 7 Miles @ 8:31
Friday: 8 Miles @ 8:31
Sunday: Yasso 800s
Total of approximately 32 Miles
The older shoes now have 174 miles on them. I will break in the new pair this week. This is also the last week of the 8:31 goal.

The Yasso 800s are a training technique that is a predictor of marathon finishing time. Basically, if you want to run a 3 hour 30 minute marathon, you'll have to run 800 meters (1/2 mile) in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. Then you'll jog comfortably for that same amount of time. Then you will repeat this 9 more times. So you'll run 10 800 meters at a pretty brisk pace with some jogging in between. The end result is that your average time across the 10 runs is supposedly an accurate marathon finishing time predictor. Here's a link better explaining the Yasso 800s. I have a goal in mind for my current fitness level, but I have never done this exercise before, so it should be interesting. I will attempt to do the Yasso 800s two more times after this one. They will be in the weeks of August 11th and September 8th.

Have a good week.