PMain & the Kinley's!

Spada's playing catch up!

So 2 weeks ago Paul Mainwaring sent the e-mail out that called for a workout of: 3 miles, 800m recovery, 2 miles, 800m recovery, 1 mile. This would all be done at McAlpine with a Dew point we'll get to later! Paul knew that I would take the bait since I'm game for just about anything! What he didn't know was that the Kinley's (Jordan and Meagan) would commit. What a group we had...

We met at 7am and set off for a 3 mile warm up which left us drenched. Everyone except Jordan was concerned about the paces that we set for ourselves so we tempered them. That comforted Meagan. Lets face it, you can only run what pace you can run that day. Your body tells you what you have on any given day so take it! For Meagan and I, the first 3 miler would be run in 17 minutes and when we hit 5:50 on the first one I was pumped. Mile 2 was hit in 5:48 and we held that to the tape to get 17:26. Good start. I took off on the second segment and put a gap on Meagan which she proceeded to close and we ran the last 800 meters in lockstep. She is awesome to train with!

No water for Meagan...so now what? Proceed to drop a 5:40 last mile and leave me 2 seconds back at the line! Very cool...

Cool down and we were done!

Got an invite from said Kinley's and since my family was up north, I headed over to their pool at noon and stay there for almost 4 hours and had a blast. Strait out a Compton showed up before heading to the airport to pick up KFill and it was nice to hear all about the California running scene in the late 90's on from Jordan himself not to mention his Brown days...

Dew Point: So after the run I get the text from Meagan stating that the Dew Point was really high...stay thirst my friends!!! 

Nathan & the Hadley's!

So it was Saturday night a couple of weeks ago and I realized that I would be running solo on Sunday morning if I didn't get on my Blackberry. I reached out to Paul ('ol reliable!) and he said that Nathan Stanford would be at McAlpine at 7am. That was all I needed! I decided to run there and when I got there (4.5 miles later), in front of me stood Mark and Alana Hadley...along with Michael Kahn! This was a different group for me and I appreciated the company. It was nice to run with Alana and hear all about her meetings with some of her (and mine!) heroes of the running world. They included: Matt Tegankamp, Shalane Flanagan, Shannon Rowbury, and Kara Goucher to name just a few. Behind us I could hear Mark and Nathan going on about the different zones of training which is always interesting! On the other side of Alana was Mike Kahn just wondering why we all Marathon in the first place...good stuff! After we finished our 8 miles together, I headed home, Nathan still had 10 more miles to go, and Alana nailed her 3 mile tempo run in 18:30! Thanks guys...

"Easy on the eye, and hard on the ear!"

Today's post title is a joint-ventured reference to Maria Sharapova as supplied by Paul Mainwaring and Stephen Spada as she was getting ready to take on Petra Kvitoka in the Wimbledon final last Saturday morning.

We, well we were getting ready to take on Mike Beigay, Meagan Nedlo and Jordan Kinley in our own little 8 mile tempo run at McMullen Greenway. It was all about the mugginess.

Going into this, I was hoping that 6 minute pace would feel ok. After a 2 mile warm up and some dilly dallying, we were off.

Initially, Paul set the tempo yet after 1 mile of running, I was not happy with the pace, I felt as though we were not working hard enough. I did my best to keep the pressure on to the 4 mile mark. At one point I looked back and was pleasantly surprised to Meagan breathing down my neck! We all got to the turnaround in a tick under 24 minutes, and at that point Mike and Paul made a point to up the tempo as I tucked in behind and hung with them to the 6 mile mark. At that point, Meagan shut it down as she encouraged Jordan to go and catch the guys. Jordan goes by me with some kind words as he got right up to the other guys who were 5 meters up on me. At the finish they were about 50 meters up as I hit 8 miles in 47:38...I was pleased with the effort. 2 mile cool down for all of us with some easy conversation followed.

Thanks guys...