For Whom the Dogs Bark

36F, 90%, calm and clear.  A fantastic morning, just warm enough to run in shorts.  I shed my gloves after 5 miles, but that was a little much.  Put my monitor on for the first time since the marathon, and noticed right away that my resting heart rate was low, 50 bpm.  I hadn't run yesterday due to time pressures, and I am traveling later this week, so I decided to run hard this morning.  Original plan was LHR, but that doesn't work well anyway when it is this cold.  Splits were as follows:  9:13 (141), 8:50 (146), 8:22 (152), 8:05 (159), 8:01 (161), 7:50 (165), 7:45 (166), 7:31 (169), 7:24 (175) and 7:10 (179).  Didn't quite make it to a 5k pace on the last 2.  Overall 8:01 pace, 160 bpm, 181 max.  0.45 miles cooldown.  Very stiff and sore, but better after an hour of stretching and lifting at the gym.

46F, 44%, N 7 mph, clear.  Full moon, nice running, but definitely colder than 46F -- I had to put gloves on after 4 miles.  Ran 10.07 miles in 1:55:35, 11:29/mile, 120 bpm, max 125 -- pretty good LHR run.  Started out at 12:13, got down to 11:12 at one point, but immediately back to the 11:20s after that.  Finished at 11:30, so was able to hold the pace through the run, which is an improvement.

39F, 88%, calm and clear.  Another full moon -- ran Tuesday's workout again because I liked it a lot.  Warmed up for 2 then hit the fast miles a little bit harder, ended up with an overall 7:57 pace for the 10 miles, not counting the 0.45 cooldown.  Not including the warmup miles, my overall pace for the remaining 8 was probably in the 7:30 - 7:40 range.  Last 2 were 7:22 and 7:14, so still not hitting 5K pace on those.  My heart rate monitor went completely haywire, reading out anywhere between 180 and 150 on the fast miles, so I don't have the necessary info to compare today to Tuesday, but I felt tireder today, unsurprisingly.

Finished up with stretching and lifting at the gym, which helped the post-run joint inflammation a lot.  But now I have a stiff neck.

Driving to Arizona starting this afternoon, hopefully I can get some running in on the trip.

38F (31 WC), 58%, SSE 5 mph, Fort Stockton, Texas.  On my way to Arizona, holed up in Fort Stockton for the night.  There is a long straight road heading northwest out of town that I ran last summer, so I went back out there.  Took a long time to get light, but I had only 7 hours of driving today so I didn't worry about starting late.  Ran out and back on the road, most of the traffic is the oil-field variety.  Their oil around here is high sulfur, so the air has a slight but distinctive rotten-egg smell; they call it the smell of money.  I was running against the 70 mph traffic.  The big tractor trailer rigs would always move to the center of the road to give me plenty of room.  But the dualy trucks would usually move towards me, trying to crowd me off the road -- it worked several times.  The good thing is that the traffic kept all the dogs away -- I don't do well with free-range dogs.

The "out" part went pretty well, maintained a good solid pace with a modest heart rate.  Then I turned around to find that I had been running slightly downhill with a slight tailwind.  Turns out the road hasn't changed since last summer.  Overall 8:45 per mile for 15 miles.

Ate breakfast, hit the road, and made Arizona before dark.

15F (10WC), W 15 mph, clear, Red Hill, New Mexico.  My hometown is Eagar, AZ, which is 15 miles inside the New Mexico border.  Driving in last night I saw a pullout about 10 miles on the NM side of the state line and mostly downhill all the way in, so I got an idea.  My brother Daryl, who lives there, texted me suggesting a six-mile climb out of town heading south, ending up at 9,000 feet (there is no snow this year, so we had our choice of where to run).  I was a bit too smart to take that bait, so I suggested that he park at the state line and run east, and I would drive out to the pullout and run west until we met, then we would run back to his car.  He was supposed to wait to start, so that we would meet at about the 7-mile mark and it would be 6 for him and 10 for me.

I checked the temperature before I left and the computer said 27F -- I almost went from three shirts to two, knowing that the thinner air makes the cold easier to handle.  But I thought better of it, knowing I could always take one off if I got warm.  On the way out in the pre-dawn I almost hit a herd of elk crossing the road, 4 cows and an anterless bull.  Then as I climbed I noticed the temperature guage on my car was going nuts, first 21F, then all the way down to 17F.  It normally registers 4 degrees warm, so I am calling it 15F.  There was a stiff breeze as well, so it was as cold as I have ever run.

The course started out at 7,400' feet and ended up at about 7,200'.  So it was mostly downhill but not the first mile -- that one was straight up, so steep I had to tilt my head back to see the top.  My face was immediately frozen solid and I was creeping up the hill, lungs on fire.  About halfway up the hill I remembered my pepper spray, tucked away in my suitcase back in town.  No big deal except for the wolves out here.  There are quite a few of them and I realized that at this speed I was a better breakfast prospect than the elk.  Almost turned around but decided that with the average car coming by every eight minutes I could hold them off for that long and hope that the car would stop.  The sun came out at the top of the hill, though, and at least my face was immediately out of danger, not that it looks that great.

Daryl showed up at mile 5, not mile 7.  Was definitely happy to see him, and by then I was running pretty well.  Splits for the run were 10:37, 9:37, 9:04, 9:09, 8:44, 8:44, 8:36, 8:23, 8:10 and 7:56, so it was a good run under the circumstances and Daryl says I gave him a good workout.