Happy New Year

Started the new year with the penguin plunge in Del Mar at the beach. The water temperature is a chilly 55 degrees - not too bad for a quick plunge.  I was fearing this little plunge from the moment that I decided to do this, but in the end, it was not really that bad at all.  Ran as fast as possible into the water and then dove under a couple of waves, looked around, and came out...ran out really

It was not nearly as bad as I imagined.  I had run 8.2 miles to old pump station 65 in the morning and felt pretty good most of the "swim".  I could feel the legs getting very cold after about a minute so I bolted back out. 

I'm at 178 as of today - still 10 lbs over my racing goal weight.  That may be an unrealistic goal, but I've got to have one for the weight.  I don't really feel light yet, but a as little as a couple pounds works wonders on picking up the pace.
No injuries on the horizon and i'm getting a weekly massage with Carles for the first part of the year to see how well I can do in the BAA marathon on April 15th.

I tabulated a path to 3:04 below by Boston using the Jack Daniles VDOT method

	jan 2H	feb 1H	feb 2H	march 1H	march 2H
	3:17	3:14	3:11	3:07	3:04
	VDOT : 48	VDOT : 49	VDOT : 50	VDOT : 51	VDOT : 52
	Mile Pace	Mile Pace	Mile Pace	Mile Pace	Mile Pace
Easy	8:50	8:40	8:32	8:24	8:16
Marathon Pace	7:32	7:24	7:16	7:09	7:02
Threshold	7:05	6:58	6:51	6:44	6:38
Interval	6:31	6:24	6:18	6:12	6:06