Still in the teens and it's the end of March. A recent knee injury has laid me up for 3 weeks; but I've been resting for Spring Break.
When I pitched going to Sarasota to D12 over Spring Break it came with a deal to run every day and practice soccer. She thought about it for a second and said 'OK'. I know I'm not supposed to bribe her into running, but it's working.
Saturday, first day of Spring Break, is spent home in Minneapolis. Although the day before is in the teens, this day gets to the upper 30's. GF takes D12 for a 6 mile run. D12 runs GF into the ground running 47 minutes for 6.1. GF is a little grumpy.
Sunday is a travel day, and GFs usual day off.
Monday - A run on the Sarasota Siesta Key beach. Hard packed sand and a flat beach is about the best beach running you could find. Running at 10am when the temperature is climbing into the upper 70s after having come from the teens is a bit of a shocker. Me and D10 run 3 miles. My knee starts to bother me in the last mile. D12 is supposed to be running with GF, but is a whimpering mess. She puts in about 4 lazy, complaint filled, miles. GF does her usual 6.
Tuesday - Back to the beach. GF likes the beach. D12 doesn't like the beach. She runs about 3. GF runs usual 6 and is annoyed with my daughter. Me and D10 sit in lounge chairs.
D12 and I have a short heart to heart. As a parent, you know that's a one-way conversation, right? We talk about controlling the things you can control - attitude and effort. And we talk about how negative talk (COMPLAINING) makes you feel even worse. It's a downward spiral.
Wednesday - We find a state park about 5 miles away and go there with high hopes of trails. Apparently they don't make woodsy trails in Florida because the gators would like them. We ran on the road that split the state park. I ran a pretty strong 4. GF and D12 stopped a couple times to keep me motivated. GF and D12 ran almost 7. D12 is getting some mojo back. No complaining today. Plenty of compliments from Dad.
Thursday - We sought out a middle school to run on the track for a little more variety. Half-way to the school we remembered it's spring break for us, but school is in session in Florida. So we felt a little sneaky running from the filling parking lot to the track behind the school. D12 ran 2 brisk, 43 second 200M as a warm-up for an all-out 400M. I wanted a solid time to be able to project her best possible mile time. Then 4 more 200M at 42-43 seconds. She did the 400M in 74, which I wasn't overly impressed with. The mile calculation we were using is 400M x 4.4 + 6 seconds to get a mile time. By that math her best possible mile with 74 second speed could be 5:30. We'll have to work on that speed.
I ran 4 x 200M at 42-43 seconds. I could feel my back getting stiffer so I called it a workout.
GF ran a PR for 6 miles in 42 something. WOW! 7:24 per mile or something like that.
Friday - GF and D12 started on the beach but took to the Siesta Key streets for another 7 miler. D10 and I lounged on the beach. D12 recovered face-down on a blanket for the next 2 hours. She's a bit tuckered. But, she didn't whine. Broke the news later in the day that we were going to run a 5K on the beach Saturday morning. No complaints.
Saturday - We all went to the beach for the races including my parents (the Ps love sports and especially grandkid sports). D10 entered the 1 mile beach fun run and defied her own and her Dad's expectations and finished 3rd overall and 1st female, beating more than 100 other kids and parents running with their kids, and brought home a monster medal. Similar to her sister in the fall cross-country race, she got confused about the finish and stopped by her grandfather instead of crossing the finish line. Now she has to stop teasing her sister about chasing the pacing golf-cart off the course. I timed her in 8:12. I ran with her for about 200M after the half mile and she was flying! She hit a bump at the 3/4 mark or she would have broken 8 minutes!
The 5K race was also an out and back beach race. I tried to get GF and D12 to warm-up so they would be comfortable running a fast first mile, but they don't like to warm-up. All D12 got out of it was me telling her to run a fast first mile. That's NOT what I meant! I always talk to her about an even paced race. Don't make the race hard until after the half-way point at least. She heard fast first mile. And she did a fast first mile. Didn't get a time on it, but was probably well under 7 minutes.
We were all over-zealous. I went out too fast too. I don't know what I was thinking. I've run 4 miles in the last month. 8:03 first mile. Too fast. Bonk! I finished in 27:18. Not awful, but better pacing would have been probably a minute faster.
GF went out too fast too; slower than D12, but she says she paid for it too. She finished in 22:24, finishing 2nd in her age group - which will go unnamed. Just OUTSTANDING. She got a huge medal.
D12 bonked hard running the last two miles in about 1:30 minutes per mile slower than the first one, but she still managed to hold on for the win at 24:42. She went home with a huge medal.
Grandparents got the opportunity to gush on the grandkids and make excuses for me.
I was the only one from the clan to go home without a medal, but I had the biggest smile.
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