It was another hot week of training this week and it took another crash and burn experience to make me get up early for my long run.
Sunday 6/4 - Rest. There was a lot of other stuff going on today. J graduated from high school. We got to the school at 12:45 pm to stand in line in 80+ degree heat until the doors opened at 1:15 pm for the 2 pm ceremony. The parking lot and line to get in looked like Black Friday except it was swelteringly hot. After the ceremony it took another HOUR to get out of the school parking lot. Family went out to dinner after that so this pretty much consumed the whole day.
Monday 6/5 - 7 miles. Ended up running indoors as it was another hot day and the miserable 12.5 mile run from last week was still somewhat fresh in my memory so I went to the fitness center. Ran a 2 mile warm up on the hamster track then hit the dreadmill to run 3 miles, averaging 8:33 a mile, then did a 2 mile cool down back on the hamster track. Felt good overall about this run.
Tuesday 6/6 - 3 miles. Ran in the evening on the county road after work. It was hot but tolerable. I was super proud of myself for getting a run in after work since, lately, when I have to work the 6 am shift all I've managed to do is make it home and to the couch before falling asleep.
Wednesday 6/7 - Rest. Another 6 am work day. Glad I got my run in yesterday so I could rest today!
Thursday 6/8 - 3 miles. Mid-morning run on the county road before going to work. I didn't have to leave for work until 1 pm. It's hard to believe that during some of my other training cycles I would run 19-20 miles in the morning before going in for this shift. Today I was proud of myself for getting 3 in.
Friday 6/9 - 7 miles. So... it was my day off and I slept in. Then, around 11:30 am I decided it was time to run. It was another 80+ degree day but it kinda sorta felt cooler than last week. Since my 7 indoors on Monday had gone well I decided to do a similar run on the county road. 2 mile warm up wasn't bad. Then a mile in 8:30. That mile finished on an uphill and I could feel myself working for it. Next mile in 8:51. There were some rollers and if that mile hadn't finished on a downhill I wouldn't have made sub-9:00. After that I was cooked. Started seeing black spots again and had to walk a bit. It was a miserable last 3 miles back to the house where I had to walk-jog-drag myself back. Arghhhh. Why didn't I run earlier in the day when it was cooler? I just don't learn, do I?
Saturday 6/10 - 14 miles. Well, after the misery on Friday I set my alarm for 5:30 am so I had time to wake up, eat a bowl of oatmeal, let it digest, then run while it was still relatively cool out. I still didn't make it out the door til 7:30 am but that is a whole heck of a lot better than 11 am. Plus, the temperatures were suppose to rise into the 90's today so if I was going to run long outdoors I pretty much HAD to do it in the morning.
This time I had a fuel belt with water and Gatorade chews, plus my phone. My friend John was running the San Diego 100 that had started on Friday morning. After running through the night he was in 13th place this morning with about 15 more miles to go. I knew he had a great shot at breaking 24:00 so I wanted to continue tracking him as he finished. I ran a nice easy pace. As John's race entered the 23 hour mark I found myself stopping every mile, then half mile, to check my phone to see if he had finished. I finally got the update that he had finished in 23:08 (the results are delayed so the official race clock was at 24:00 when I got the update), still in 13th place, when I got to mile 8 of my run. Finished my run uneventfully after that.
So, starting early and running with water, I ran 14 in less time than it took to run 12.5 last week, mainly because I didn't have to walk. It reached 80 degrees by the time I was done. I will probably have to start my longer runs closer to 6 am as the summer progresses. It was a nice feeling to know the run was done though and I had completed all my scheduled runs for the week.
34 miles this week.
Seeee... already improving! Go get it!
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