Tuesday

I should probably rewind a moment, and note that i didn't workout Monday.  Monday was a day of epic stupid and bad planning for me.  I did not eat breakfast/lunch until...4pm.  I was slated to run at 6pm, and it was so hot & humid.  I thought 2 hours would be enough time for my stomach to feel ready, but it was not.  I had an 8pm client scheduled, so thought I might do a later-in-the-evening run.  It *still* felt gross even at 10pm.  My "screw this" attitude took over and I proclaimed a cease to any and all running until this ridiculous steaminess leaves us.

Naturally, this didn't last but 24 hours until I realized that my flab was NOT going to go away by skipping runs.  So, here's Tuesday.

what: trail speed workout
where: BCGB
distance: 5.16 miles
time - 1 hour ish

I wish I had more accurate data for the time, but I need to sit down and add up some things, because my GPS/timer acted very strangely at first and so for half of the workout, I didn't track distance, only time (and this was after I had tried to "reset" it a few times - so it had about a dozen splits added).  Then I reset it and got the distance from the halfway point -  but I still need to add the times.

Today, it felt like a steambath.  Not *nearly* to the extent that it did yesterday, but it was still pretty humid, especially once you reached the creek area.  Luckily most of the mud had gone away.  I decided to head out to 360 and survey what the flooding had done to the trails down in that area, since I had not been down there after the recent floods.

I made it a point to stretch well before this run.   The last couple of runs I did, I felt like I rushed through the stretching.  Even with a good stretching - warmup was brutal today.  It was 100% the humid, heat that was causing this. My energy/fuel levels felt good, and I made it a point to take salt before the run - which is good because I'm not sure if I ever poured sweat as quickly & profusely as I did during today's run.  I though just one water bottle would be fine, since I wasn't planning on a lot of time/distance.

I didn't feel warmed up well until probably just about 2 miles in.  I wanted to go 6 miles, but I really only had time to go 5 miles because I had dinner plans tonight - so I went out to what I thought was 2.5 miles.  Amazingly, once I reset the GPS to track distance and time, I measured that I had run out 2.553 miles - woohoo for my inner GPS.  My goal today was to go back in faster than I went out - by a decent amount - and I succeeded.  It was so steamy, that maintaining a fast pace was really really hard, so I thought that I'd do 4:1 intervals in.  (4 min run, 1 min walk)   I was running at paces that I had a very very hard time keeping for 4 minutes, even.  A few times I had to stop and walk 15 seconds, so I'd just add that extra 15 onto my timer before I could stop and walk the 1min.  Even with the 1 min walking, 4 running intervals, I beat my time out by quite a bit - rough estimates put me more than 6 mins ahead of the pace I went out - that's a pretty big pace increase for a 2.5 mile distance- so woohoo.

Even though this one was tough - I felt like a million bucks afterward.  Overall, a good workout.