It's gettin' busy.

The date for the BAE Half Marathon looms for me. It's only three weeks away and I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep the pace I need for the sub two hour finish. I went out for a run on Sunday and had big plans for it. Amanda and I live about four miles from Sugar Hollow Park where there happens to be a nice cross country 5k course. My plan was to run to Sugar Hollow and maybe do the 5k course and run back. I got to the first intersection for the Target shopping center, which was about a quarter to half mile from the park, and decided that was a good place to turn around and head back home.

My entire run was on Highway 11, which most days is a pretty busy road, but late Sunday mornings, it's a ghost town. There were some cars on the road, but not anywhere near the volume that you regularly see. The route was good in that the first part of the run is mostly downhill, with one downhill being about a half mile, so coming back was very challenging. I felt like I stayed on my 8-9 minute per mile mark, but I could tell I slowed on the hills.

The whole trip was around 7.5 miles and I ran it in 56:47, which I don't consider a bad time at all. I figure that my early miles were fairly quick-paced. Again, I felt pretty good after my run, but do I think I could run for another 6 miles? I'm not sure. I didn't feel THAT good after Sunday's run, but if the half were that day, I would've done it. Probably not under two hours though.

This weekend is the 12th Annual 12 Hours of the Hill of Truth mountain bike race in Knoxville. Every year some friends and I take a team to this race, Granny's Rotten Teeth. We do pretty good every year, finishing mid-pack to somewhere near the top. Last year's weather was terrible so the lack of attendance and our aversion to quitting put us in the top spot. Needless to say, a couple of my running days will be substituted for some riding days this week. Which also means that the first blog for next week will either be about the bike race or will wait until I get to run again.