Zeppy 5K

The weather couldn't have been better for our 5K (well for Ithaca anyway). It hovered just around freezing, but the sky was clear blue, the sun was out, and the fall colors were at their peak. Five of us ran as a group (Heather, Ben, Gretchen, Cresten and me) and it made the run fly by. The run went through the Cornell Plantations and there were more hills than I'm used to, but it was still quite a doable run. I forgot to turn my pedometer on at the start, but it recorded 2.25 miles in 28'52" for an average run time of 12'49" per mile. See the (partial) run stats here.

Post-run we hit the the Friends of the Library booksale and I bought Marathon Training for Dummies and Beginning Bicycle Racing. Most of the advice is common sense, but it's fun to read and good motivation to start working on my speed. I'm already a few chapters into the marathon book, and so far I haven't learned anything new but have gotten validation for many of my training practices. For example, the authors suggests keeping a training log--or blog in this case--to keep track of run stats and equipment purchases, and signing up for short races as motivation. I also learned that the word marathon cames from a Greek soldier who ran from Marathon to Athens to deliver a message and then promptly died. The distance came from the first Olympic marathon in London, and the 0.2 miles came from wanting the race to finish in front of the royal family.