Weekend Runs

I had to work this Saturday over in the CT department. The ER kept us busy so the day passed quickly. I got home from work a little after 4:00 and headed out for my long run. It was 77 degrees with winds 13mph from the East with 65% humidity. I had intended to run 9 miles but about 4 1/2 miles in I started to get hot with a nice case of cottonmouth so I decided to cut it short at 7. I ran pretty conservtively and when I felt myself pushing the pace I slowed it down to avoid crashing from the heat. I ran splits of 8:42, 8:35, 8:13, 8:27, 8:33, 8:30 and 8:41 for a total time of 59:41, just a little over 8:30 pace.

Our friends came over later that night for pizza. The husbands stayed inside with the babies and the beer while the ladies sat on the porch and chatted. I popped in some of my Tom Waits Cds and danced with the babies. Our friends' little girl really liked "Get Behind the Mule" and shook her little butt to the song. Watching a 14 month old girl shake her butt is pretty funny, especially when your 10 month old son is bobbing his head to the music at the same time.

I got up Sunday morning to run an easy three miles to make oup for cutting my long run short the day before. I ran three because two miles wasn't worth getting out of bed for. It was pretty nice this morning with a 59 degree temp but with 21mph winds that gusted to 30mph out of the ESE but only 44% humidity. I ran easy again with splits of 8:53, 8:41, and 8:14 for a 25:48. I didn't wear the HR monitor either day because I jsut didn't feel like wearing the damn thing. Sometimes I feel like I spend too much time looking at it, and ignoring it, than listening to my body.

Tomorrow is a hard day. I am going to go to the track, run a two mile warm up and then do 3 sets of 2x200 with 200 recovery jogs + 400m with a 400m recovery jog. This workout came out of "Daniels' Running Formula." I am supposed to run the 200s in 43 seconds and the 400s in 1:27. It should be a fun workout.

The rest of my week looks like an easy 4 on Tuesday, 3x1 mile at tempo pace(6:51) with 1 minute recovery on Wednesday, an off day on Thursday, easy 4 on Friday and 9 on Saturday. I had planned to go to Peoria and do the Race for the Cure but there is no way I could get up there to do packet pick-up on Thursday since they don't take race day entries. I wanted to do a 5k this weekend as a tune-up for the Passavant-Powerade 10k in Jacksonville on June 2nd but I guess I'll just have to do without a race this month.

I ran 29.25 miles this week to bring my total for the year to 464.25 which is an average of 25.79 miles a week. I am 113.25 miles ahead of where I was at this point last year. This week last year I had an aborted attempt at a 3 mile time trial that I covered in a blazing fast 24:04. Apparently I thought is was a good idea to run my first mile in 6:53 but only ran mile two in 7:10 and walked/jogged mile three in 10:00. I have come a long way in a year. I did, however, run 8x400 in an average of 1:31.15 two days after my disasterous three mile and I ran a 10 mile long run at 75% of my max HR in 1:26:14 through the hills south of Chatham. Looking at the temp and humidity last year it was considerably cooler last year. The hottest day I ran in was 70, as opposed to 88.

I will write the details of my track workout tomorrow night. Have a good Monday!