Check up...

It has been over a month since i worte last. Been a change of life, as far as school and work and all that is concerned and the blog kind of dropped off the radar. I am going to try and fill in the holes of the last month and the new goals i have for the next few months.
At the end of september i ran in the 3rd annual Flagstaff half Marathon. It is an off road race at the local cross country skiing venue outside of flagstaff. It is located at 8000ft of elevation and the course itself had over 1100ft of elevation gain. It started off good. I am not really great on hills but i was in 5th place after the first two miles and stuck there for the rest of the race. I was splitting under 7min miles until mile 9. Miles 9 and 10 were clocked in at 17min, because they were all uphill. I couldn't believe how long that hill was and when it was going to come back down. I finished in 5th place with a personal best time of 1:30.08. I wanted to break 1:30 but i was pleased to have gone under 7min mile pace on such a hard course. That has been the only race i have done since my last post.
I have been nursing some knee pain the last few weeks. I took the two weeks after the half marathon easy to try and rehab my knee. I am still feeling pain, but it isn't getting any worse, so i have resumed training on it.
As of this week, i have about 11 1/2 weeks til the PF Changs Rock n Roll Marathon in Phoenix in January. As stated above, i have resumed training and it is going good so far. Yesterday i ran 1000m repeats on the new track at my old high school. They were in 3.55, 3.50, 3.40 3.31, 3.24. I purposely started my first 1000m in 6:15 mile pace (since that is my goal pace for the marathon) and increased them each time. I meant to go 5 seconds faster every 1000 but after my third one, i was feeling really good and went a little faster on the last two. I have an 11mile long run on thursday and am increasing my long runs by 1mile every week until i get to 20miles which will be two weeks from the marathon and then a two week taper.
I am also planning on running the tucson half marathon on december 7th as a tune up run for the marathon. I want to see that i can hold the 6:15 pace and get more accustomed to a road race in the desert.
I do not have any plans passed that. Tentatively i am looking at racing the Desert Classic Duathlon in February and perhaps the Tempe International Triathlon in May. That is it.