Football euphoria

Could things be going any better in the college football world? MSU is now 2-0 after a hard fought 28-17 win over Bowling Green, Notre Dame is 0-2 after being blown out by Penn State (Sorry Jess....lol) and Michigan is 0-2 after getting rolled over by Oregon. The only bad part is ND and UofM play each next week and somebody has to win. But maybe MSU will be 3-0 after playing Pittsburgh, that's something to root for!


On Thursday I did an easy 5 miles around Lake Lansing, where the 8K race is gonna be this weekend. At least I planned it to be easy....I was going at an easy pace but it seemed to be laboring. My left shin was bothering me all of a sudden, and afterward it just kept bugging me. Hello shin splints, we meet again. So I iced it a couple of times the rest of the day Thursday, and then analyzed how I felt Friday morning. I was pretty hesitant about getting out there for a run on Friday but I wanted to do a moderate tempo run. I ran a mile warm up and things felt good so I decided to go for it. The tempo was gonna be 6 miles in duration but I decided to cut it to 4 just in case. I didn't want to make things worse than they already were, even though I was feeling good at that moment. I was gunning for 6:25-6:30 pace, and I ended up doing 6:23, 6:26, 6:27, and 6:15 (I had some adrenaline at the end I guess), so I was satisfied with that. Add the 1 mile cool down and that's 6 miles.

I took Saturday off, as I was at the MSU football game. It was a great day except for the shin. I was sitting on a table in the morning with my feet dangling and somebody hit my other leg accidentally, which in turn slammed into the shin that has the splints. Soooooo it hurt pretty much all day and I wasn't near any ice or anything to try and make it feel better. I was planning on running 13 or 14 miles on Sunday but finally after hours of thinking about it during the afternoon on Saturday, I decided to delay it until yesterday morning. Sunday morning I biked 12 miles instead, and things felt alright. The 13 miler went great yesterday too, my shin wasn't bothering me at all. I ran the half-marathon course just so I could see it all, even though I've run on portions of it so many times before. It's fairly flat, but it's kind of cool how some of it is on streets, some is on paved trail, and some is through a now defunct golf course. So you get a little bit of everything in there. The local newspaper here has a countdown on their website, and then if you click The Course button, you can actually see the course. Somebody actually biked it and videotaped the route, and they sped it up to show what it's going to look like when we run it....I think it's pretty cool.

Sunday was also the 9th race in the 12 race Playmakers Race Series - the Dewitt Trail Run 5K. I'm used to it now, but sometimes it still amazes me how the older runners in this area can hold their own against the young guns. Check out the top 10 from Sunday...

# Age Time
1) 41 16:26
2) 44 16:41
3) 23 16:47
4) 21 17:06
5) 44 17:23
6) 18 17:42
7) 47 17:55
8) 29 17:58
9) 18 18:33
10) 46 18:38

There's just as many masters runners in the Top 10 as there are young people. And it's like that almost every race. It just goes to show that not everybody loses speed and endurance as they age....well, just not as quick.

"I hate to put it this way, but there were [Detroit] Lions games that were less embarrassing than this." --Detroit Free Press writer Mitch Albom, on Michigan losing to Oregon