Its become a positive saturday ritual to go to forest park and run on the leaf ericsson trail. I have been amazed that this year I have exceeded the usual 8k distance handily. I've been doing 15k runs for the last 3 weekends. Last weekend I finish the last two miles with the help of a friendly jogger who ran as a sort of wingman and kept me from stopping. Today's run I did the whole distance and felt fine at the end - i could have gone further! Since I'm going the distance, I'm focusing on speed. I'm still doing 10 minute miles.

On the trail today i saw the Jesuit High School track team blow past me like I was standing still. Some were marathon runners. You can tell the marathon runners by the tiny packs of liquid refreshment attached to the belt.

"If you surveyed all the greatly successful people in the world, some would be charismatic, some would be not so; some would be tall, some would be short; some would be fat, some would be thin. But the common denominator is that they're all capable of sustained, focused attention" -- Lance Armstrong, Every Second Counts p156