I spent a second weekend in a row at in-laws where I shot this photo of a beautiful sunset on Sunday night. Great thing about Seattle, even in mid-August the sun is out till 8:30 or so. Daylight is being shaved off the clock faster then my hairy Italian face but I'll take it while I have it. I put in a 6 miler on my normal Rhododendron loop while I was there. Took the first few miles including the huge hill fairly slowly and then turned it on to tempoish pace for final three. Felt great. My hammy had been stiff for about a week and a few days off did the trick. Not even a twinge with the all out pace at the end of this one.

My wife stayed at the in-laws with the kids and the dog and I took advantage of my rare bachelor freedom to join the group for a track workout tonight. 10-15 people showed up and after a few minutes of trying to decide what to do I steered the group into a ladder workout of 400, 800, 1200, 800, 400. All with 400 recovery.

The key is getting past the 1200 and he rest is easy. I aimed for my now horribly routine goal pace of 5:40/mile or 85 seconds a lap. There was a wide spread of running abilities and several guys stayed with me the first 400. Through 800 I had one guy who finished ahead of me. On the 1200 I passed him and finished the workout somewhat alone. It is the track so I still was running with the group albeit not at the same pace. Having run this pace for a few years nearly every set was within a second or two on either side of my goal. I had a little left in the tank for the final 400 in 76 sec.

This workout felt perfect. I was mostly spent at the finish but still with some pep. Carried this energy straight through the evening getting a laundry list of to-dos (or maybe that is honey dos) done around he house and even writing in the blog after 11pm, something I almost never do.

By the way. Seattle is now 3 weeks into 70-80 degree weather with absolutely no rain. In a word, perfect. I am trying to mentally capture as much of this awesome weather as possible to carry me through the dark Seattle days of November through May.

The summer is flying by and I haven’t blogged at all. Is anybody keeping up with this thing? There has been a lot going on in life and just haven’t had the time nor the desire to put anything down about running or anything else.

Heather delivered a beautiful baby girl on June 15th. Mae Marguerite Wesner. She is doing very well. Now that Heather and I are used to having our lives ruled by kids it wasn’t so much of a shock to throw Mae into the mix. Sleep has been decent and I’ve even been able to keep running/Crossfit fairly regularly by mixing runs into my commute home from work and workouts at our tiny gym during lunch hour.

No races or insane workouts but I am keeping at it. Up weeks and down weeks but I just concern myself with getting out there as much as I can without sweating weekly mileage or paces. I haven’t measured or paced a workout in a few months and I feel fine.

My quest to break 3 minutes running up the steps from Golden Gardens still has not been met. 3:08 is my best mark to date and after finishing I couldn’t imagine squeezing 8 more seconds out of my legs. It doesn’t really mean anything but I like the challenge and for some reason I enjoy the anticipation of my 3 -minutes of pain as I approach the hill.

Seattle does have spectacular summer weather for running. The worst day here for running is better than the best summer day in Philly for running. We’ve only broken 80 degrees a few times and have hit a high of just 84 degrees for the summer. The evenings are cool and breezy and almost always require a light jacket or sweathshirt. I don’t miss the heat at all.

I’ve also been kicking around the idea of a spring marathon. Eugene has a flat fast race at the end of April and it finishes on Hayward field. That could be a great race. I’d still be gunning for a sub 3:00 hr marathon if I could get myself in decent enough shape to start training in January. However, Heather and I have a bid in on a piece of land to build a house in Seattle and if that comes through I’d have a boatload of extra work on my plate between now and that race. It would really squeeze any time for doing a reasonable training program and probably put my plans for racing on hold. I sort of feel like time is ticking for a 3:00 hr marathon. I’m 35 now and I’ve noticed that my racing results now have an age graded curve. I have no doubt with great training I could do it even at 40 but the training is the hardest part. Each passing year just makes it slightly more difficult to get there.