For Whom the Dogs Bark

65F, 86% humidity, wind S 12 mph.  Nice spring morning out there.  My Garmin went dark about 20 steps into the run so I finished entirely by feel.  Ran for 2:06 and figured a 10:30 pace in regular shoes.  I got the Garmin to go on once for just long enough to get a heart rate readout, at about mile 6, 133, a little high for this type of run.  So I slowed down a little, but that is the only data point I got, other than the clock on my cell phone.  Plus I know the distances in my neighborhood pretty well, so it kind of worked.  I don't know how Pheidippedes did it without a GPS watch.

59F, 63% humidity, wind NNE 6 mph.  First look at my Blackberry this morning showed 70F.  After a moment of panic I realized that was last night's readout, and was much relieved when I got the true temperature, which is only a little bit warmer than ideal.  The intent today was to do 8 at 7:15, which is goal half marathon pace for my race in 2-1/2 weeks.  I got it but it was hard.  Warmed up for 2 miles, 9:48 and 8:22 and accelerated into the fast ones:  7:12 (161), 7:04 (170), 7:02 (173), 7:08 (175), 7:14 (176), 7:23 (176) (that one woke me up), 7:12 (178) and 7:02 (181), average pace about 7:10, good result but I could not have run 13 at this pace today.  2 cooldown.  12.02 total in 1:36:26, 8:01 average pace.  In my mental fog at mile 9 I started wondering how many dogs have barked at me in my running life.  I decided at least one per mile, I must be on the wall of honor down at the K9-VFW.

67F, 87% humidity, wind SE 6 mph.  Not a good morning for running, there I said it.  At least it wasn't cold.  Ran 10.19 miles in 1:48:43, average pace 10:40 per mile, LHR and regular-weight shoes.  Heat started getting to me towards the end, I was soaked to the skin by the time I finished.  Lots of pain left in my legs from yesterday's run, some of it in new spots.  I got two bad cramps in my right hamstring yesterday morning and it was still hurting today, to the point it altered my stride for the first few miles.  Despite the negative factors that kept my LHR speed slow this morning (heat, heavy shoes, hung over legs), I think the bottom line is it is slower overall right now.  I have continued to improve on the high end for the first couple of months this year, but my guess is that unless I get the low end back I will eventually run out of capacity to get more speed.  That isn't a traditional way to think about conditioning, but it makes sense to me.  Right now I seem to be unwilling to forget about races and just do LHR runs for 8-12 weeks, which is really what it takes.  If I don't have a race coming up in the next few weeks I start to get impatient.

54F, 72% humidity, wind N 7 mph.  Didn't run yesterday, work was impossible, up late and up early.  Ran 10.22 miles in 1:44:45, 10:15 per mile, low heart rate and regular shoes.  26 second per mile improvement over Wednesday.

58F, 87% humidity, wind S 10 mph.  Unlike yesterday, it was getting warmer as I ran today rather than cooler.  The program was to run an entire long run at low heart rate.  Started out OK, a little slower than yesterday, hitting mid-10s for the first 8 or 9 miles, not as good as yesterday but OK.  Then it went south.  I was in the low 12s by the time I finished, kind of interesting and disheartening at the same time.  I now know for sure that I need to do a lot more running in this range.  It is hard to do long runs at low heart rate unless I do them alone though.  I am starting to think that long runs are like regular runs, they should be either fast or slow to get the most benefit.  I was really beat up by the time I finished, which again shows that I am working a different system than usual.  Ran 20.12 miles in 3:41, average pace 11:02 per mile.

I am traveling starting Tuesday morning and will be jet lagged, so running is going to be a mess this week.  Don't know what the situation will be as far as temperatures, time or a place to run, and I won't be back until Sunday night.  Probably time for an easier week anyway.  Bummer is that I might also be traveling the following weekend, when I have a half scheduled in Beaumont.  So life is intruding a little.