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Training Continues

Tour de Lake Norman State Park Crew
After Mill Stone 50k, I'm back on track with training for Boston, which essentially means no more races. However, I've managed to find good people and places to run with.

Feb. 16: Paced Maggie for all 26.2 at Myrtle Beach Marathon. The course itself was...bleh. But the pre- and post-race festivities were fun with the Vac & Dash peeps. I fine pacing parallels walking with others in life - to carry other's burden (or water bottle and gels), to be by his/her side (also means walking/running in their pace), and to put other's needs first. Since I didn't decide to pace the whole distance till the last week, I paid a steep price to run the race. While this was entirely bad planning on my part, walking with others does require us to make sacrifices sometimes...

Feb. 23: Emily recruited me to man an aid station at Charlotte 10 miler. With guaranteed rain in the morning of the race, I agreed only reluctantly. Standing in the rain and cold was as miserable as imagined. Fortunately, Eimear and Gina were there to joke and laugh. What great attitude they have. A little after 9 a.m., Emily and I met up with Adrienne for our long run.  Now running in the rain was a lot more fun than standing around. Good company beats bad weather any day.

Mar. 2: Brandon mapped out a good 18.5 loop at Lake Norman State Park. Nothing like a long run on new (to me) trails with some of my favorite trail peeps. Beth even drove down from Boone to join us. The route Brandon mapped out consists of an initial 5 miles on hiking trails, then 1.5 mile on state park road that brought us to the trail head of a MTB trail loop (6 miles). After that, we ran further along on State Park road to hop onto another MTB trail loop before retracing our steps on State park road and the hiking trail we started with to finish. Normally, I wouldn't be able to hang with Brandon, Rob, and Beth, but they were all taking it easy. It was fun to stick with them the whole time and finish together. Afterwards, we hang out at the parking lot for quite some time. Don even brought speaker and put some tunes on. Thanks Terri for the awesome guacamole, one of my favorite things after a long run.

I need a 20-miler next week. Any suggestions?

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