18. THANK YOU JEFF GALLOWAY!

IDEAL PLAN FOR THE ELDERLY I've noticed that nearly all the other runners disappear down the road ahead of me and make it to the finish line apparently without ever slowing down, with the exception of a few in worse condition than I, whom I eventually catch up to and pass. BUT with the years and miles I have on these old bones of mine, my goal is to simply make it to the finish line and cross it VERTICALLY, not FIRST! AND this great plan of Galloways with restful walk-breaks every half mile seem to be doing the trick for me, maybe for nobody else, (though he seems to be selling a lot of books on the subject!)

Tonight I made it all the way through a 20 mile long run, by alternating running 4/10ths of a mile with a 1/10th of a mile walk. Towards the end it was getting harder to keep running, but the thought of that rest reward less than half a mile ahead kept me going! I know that my time of 4 hours for 20 miles is no great shakes, but FOR ME it would have been a lot worse without the motivation to keep going and suffering 'til that next break. Plus my feet and legs held up. My toes and calves started hurting but they calmed down during the breaks.

There were hills and distractions that slowed me some, but my average pace was about a 12 minute mile. I'll accept that, because I made it all the way to 20 miles and could have kept it up for another 6. The alternative could've had me lying on the road somewhere like a pile of road-kill hollering for someone to come drive me home!

I've purchased the new Garmin 310xt Sports Watch with the hopes that it would be an improvement over my 305. Well, it has possibilities with it's 20 hour battery life (instead of 6 or so for the 305), faster satellite location and more accurate measurements. Plus it fits on one's wrist like a watch should. To the present I've been using both devices to test how close they measure. They're actually really close, so there's no problem there. The one problem is that the new 310 occasionally has some trouble displaying and uploading data, which Garmin Tech Services assure me is being fixed and they'll send out an up-grade as fast as they can.

I've signed up for the Lake Chelan Marathon again this year on Sat, Sept 19th, since I've had to drop out of so many of those planned ones, and there are very few that aren't on Sundays! Then Jared, Diane, John and I will be running the St George Marathon on Sat, Oct 3.