The heat and humidity eased a bit in the middle of the week, allowing me to comfortably do a few of my runs outside (something for which I was very happy). Then the outer edges of Hurricane Danny skirted the east coast and wrecked the prospects of having two decent outside weekend runs.
I’m sitting legs up in my fancy recliner, having resumed Semi-Stupor Sundays once again, thanks to the advent of the English Premier League Football season. Between the long runs on Sunday morning and hours of entertaining football, nothing gets done in my house on Sundays.
One of us lies half-conscious on the couch; the other semi-upright, but no less heavily lidded, in the recliner. The only motion observed is the periodic re-feedings every 2-4 hours. Sometimes in this soporific tableau I see a foreshadowing of our retirement years together. Then I remember that we’ll probably never be able to retire.
Anyway. Back to the week’s adventures. Monday, Tuesday, treadmill, treadmill. Wednesday, more treadmill, with some tempo effort miles. And, lo, they were faster than the last couple of weeks’ tempo miles.
Thursday I ran outside for the first time in 12 days and I was like a coked up greyhound. These were supposed to be recovery runs, and I did run them at recovery effort, but just barely. Zip zip zoom. Fall can’t come fast enough for me.
Friday I did more crazy fast running, this time on the track. A 1.75 warmup, then about three miles on the track with some one minute repeats. I was all over the place pacewise, anywhere from about 6:20-7:00. But I settled in at around 6:40 pace for most of them. A sprinkle turned into a steady rain, leaving the track all to myself for most of that work. Then things dried out and I finished up with six miles on the running path, again alone for the most part.
It was raining buckets on Saturday, so I did my recovery run inside. Slow, easy, boring. What it was supposed to be.
This morning was the third week in my long run experiment: how fast can I run at around 75% average HR? This week, it turned out to be faster than last. I ran the first two miles dead slow in 19:00. Then picked it up and ran 14 at an average 8:04 pace. HR was average 76%, although it crept up to 78% for the last four. Nevertheless, I was happy that it didn’t drift up farther than that. The next experiment is to see if these times/effort carry over to the roads. I hope next weekend brings good weather so I can see.
The South Nyack 10 Miler is in two weeks. I originally thought I’d like to break 1:09 this year, but I’m now approaching the race with no real goal. I’ll be running it after two fairly hefty weeks of miles and training, so that alone is making me reconsider setting lofty goals. And mid-September is always a crapshoot in terms of weather.
To put things in perspective, here are my previous times for that race:
2006 — 1:27:05
2007 — 1:23:35
2008 — 1:14:34
Whatever. I intend to race as well as I can and have fun. I’m pretty sure I can pick up at least another AG award this year. But even that isn’t a “goal” — more like a nice surprise if it happens.
Filed under: basebuilding, racing | 4 Comments »
Races Like a Girl 