Tuesday thoughts

• I had a great long run on Saturday. I headed out to the Bellingham Interurban Trail again with a goal to finish at least 18 miles. I made it to 21 and felt like I could have kept going. With that under my belt, I'm feeling a lot better about Rock 'n' Roll Seattle. I'm going to keep pushing hard for the next couple weeks and then do a short taper.
• At the end of my run tonight I headed to the track to give the concept of Yasso 800s a try. It was getting late so I only did 4, but I'm happy with how they went. My ideal goal for the marathon is to finish under 4 hours which means that I should be running the 800s in under 4 minutes. I didn't capture my time for the first repeat, but the other times were 3:31, 3:36, 3:40. If I backed off the pace a little, I don't think I'd have any problem doing 10.

• Thanks to Jill at Jill Will Run, I got a free copy of the Runner's Log iPhone app back in March. I've been diligently logging my runs for the past couple months. While it's neat to look back and see what I've done, the most awesome feature for me is being able to easily track the mileage on my shoes. I never had a great method for this before and always ended up calculating it manually. Now I can simply open the app and know that I've run 299.75 miles in my "new" shoes. Wow! I need to start looking into getting another pair of Brooks Defyance. The question is... do I get them before or after the marathon?
• I've always liked Luna bars, but I'm absolutely in love with the chocolate dipped coconut flavor. I used to buy Luna bars individually so I had a variety of flavors, but now I'm buying the chocolate dipped coconut bars by the box since they're a bit cheaper that way (at Target). It's interesting how my tastes have changed as I've gotten older. I didn't used to like coconut very much, mainly because of the texture, but it's really grown on me in the last year or so. The Clif coconut chocolate chip bars are also good.
• I seem to be constantly behind the times on good reads. I didn't read the Hunger Games trilogy until the movie was about to come out, and I never even heard of A Song of Fire and Ice series before Game of Thrones became popular on HBO. But wow, am I hooked now. I've finished the first two books and am anxiously waiting for the third to become available from the library. I can't believe that there are still two books that haven't been released yet. The suspense is going to kill me when I get to the end of book five.
• I also read Running on Empty by Marshall Ulrich recently. Of course the subject matter was interesting, but overall I found the writing to be a bit dull which made it feel almost like a chore to read. Instead of getting caught up in the adventure, it just seemed like a laundry list of aches and pains and other issues. I can't help but compare it to the books by Dean Karnazes. Even though both men accomplished amazing feats of endurance that I'll never ever come close to, somehow the Dean Karnazes books came across as more relatable and engaging to read.
• I'll get around to wrapping up my Expedition Everest Challenge recap eventually, but right now I'm just not in the mood to work on it.