Rest of week 2 --- August 16th, 17th and 21st

Wednesday was strength training/cross training day ... I did 4 sets of 12 reps each on the leg press (quads, hamstrings) and a couple of sets of 12 reps just for the quads ... Then did my usual dips and parallel bar chin ups (triceps and biceps) on the gravitron machine. After that i jumped into the swimming pool for 32 laps ... I felt great after the workout, best stress buster after a day at work :-)

Thursday was the usual weekly run at normal pace (~ 10 min/mile) for about 3.5 miles.

I did not get a chance to do my weekly long run on either Saturday or Sunday. There were some social events and we also went out shopping to the malls, that left my legs tired in the evening [Warning: Never go shopping if you are running later the same day or next day :-) ] . Finally i did it on the following Monday, Aug 21st. I ran 8 miles on the treadmill at around 9:53 min/mile pace, my original plan was to run at about 10:30 pace but pushed it in the second half of the run. I love doing negative splits [finishing the second half of the run faster than the first half], unfortunately have not paced myself as well in most of the marathons to be able to achieve that consistely and feel good at the end of the race. For this run, i did my first mile in 11:30, then the next five miles at 10:00 pace, the 7th mile at 9:00 pace and the last mile at around 8:29 pace. Overall finished in 78:55 for the 8 miles.