Two Weeks To 2nd Half

Finally having registered for the Palos Verdes Half Marathon, I can no longer afford to mess around. When my wife asks me to drop her off at LAX this morning, I realize I need to be dressed and ready to run by the time we need to leave...because I will not get home until later than I would ideally want to start.

As I drop my wife at LAX , I realize I do not need to start today's run from home. Continuing my drive back towards the Palos Verdes Peninsula, I start thinking about places I can park that would, for once, allow me to finish one of my orbits on a downward slope.

I decide to park at my mom's house. I have memorized more than a few ten plus mile runs that include her house en route, so it should not be hard for me to improvise an orbit from here. The toughest thing psychologically will be if I can see my house while running, but I do want to climb into my neighborhood to be able to compare times with orbits that start from home. My belief is that starting low rather than high should improve my average pace.

In practice, my average pace does improve, but not by as much as I would have thought. On previous long runs, I found myself walking before I reached the top. On this run, I do not recall walking at all, yet I have ended up with a similar average pace (probably because I could not achieve downhill speeds that I naturally achieve on nearly fresh legs).