Hacienda Holiday

Every Labor Day a wonderfully destructive group of my friends get together for a little event we call Hacienda Holiday. This weekend is filled with the three essentials: sacrificing meat on a grill, breaking mildly expensive things, and risking lives in water (because “the river will take your life if you don’t respect it. Ain’t no current in a lake, but there current in that river.”)

As you can imagine, fitting in a long run during such festive activities is difficult. So I mashed my 23M long run in early Saturday morning in East Lansing; and it was a perfect Fall for a long run. My goal pace was marathon pace plus 30sec, and of course I ran my first mile 30 seconds too fast! However I quickly settled down and stayed fairly close to my goal pace.

Then miles 19 and 20 came along, where I plopped down +8sec on and +14sec my goal pace. Surprisingly, however, I was feeling good as I grabbed my last water on the course and therefore decided to try and push my last 3M. I was able to hit the next three at 7:17, 7:08, and 7:16. I was feeling so good I decided to do one more, a very pleasing 7:08.

Overall it was a great run with an average of 7:21/M (-9sec of goal pace). Everything about the run was good, except for the missing water bottle at mile 15; which I will discuss later this week.

And finally, in case you were wondering, putting circus peanuts and marshmallows in a microwave will create an awful mess and cause said microwave to stop functioning for several hours. In case you didn’t already know that.