Again To Carthage

Big things happening in Geezer's little world these days. I took and passed the Texas Real Estate Sales exam last Monday. Waiting now on the license and making a decision on broker affiliation. I'm going today to get fingerprinted and photographed for the license. Tonight is the first group coaching for the Austin Marathon training season. It looks like we will have about 20 runners again and a mix of advanced, intermediate and beginner runners. I'm getting excited about it!

Saturday was the first long run for the Austin Marathon groups and the coaches were expected to be there. I needed to get my 24 miler in so I mapped out a 17 mile route from my house to Rogue and started out at 4:28am. I averaged a 7:20 pace down to Rogue then stood around for 25 minutes and got stiff as a board. The final 7 miles were run with Jimmy and several others at a more reasonable 8 minute pace. After the workout Sean loaned me his copy of "Again To Carthage" by John L. Parker Jr. It's the sequel to "Once A Runner" that I read last year in Sacramento. Even though the main character is a sub 4 miler and Olympic medalist, I absolutely identify with the single minded pursuit of goals and the punishing training that he endures. While I can't physically go live in the woods for a year to train for one race, my family will confirm that I am quite capable of disappearing for a couple of weeks leading up to an important marathon. During our track workout this morning, I was playing scenes from the two books in my head and completely into a zone. Except for the lap that I first passed Sadie. I think she picked up her pace just slightly as I went by and I automatically picked mine up and blew my rhythm all to hell. It took me took more laps to get back on track! Anyway, with the exception of those 3 laps, I nailed the pace on the 16x400 at 10k pace.