For Whom the Dogs Bark

75F, 100% humidity, calm and clear.  Beautiful morning, glad it finally warmed up again.  Ran 5.42 miles in 1:01:01, average pace 11:15 per mile, mostly low heart rate and regular shoes.  I pulled my other groin muscle yesterday less than a mile into the run, so sudden that I stopped in about 3 steps.  Iced it down and kept moving all day and had the ability this morning to run a little bit, could not run any faster though.  Iced it again today and hopefully things will work out so that this is minor.  Don't really have any possible use for an injury right now.

76F, 97% humidity, wind NE 1 mph, clear.  Good running weather this morning.  Ran 10.08 miles in 1:36:20, average pace 9:36/mile, regular shoes.  Went to bed with a low grade fever last night and woke up with a sore throat.  I think it affected my endurance, but the run seemed to flush the flu out of my system and I felt mostly OK today.  Ran three warmup miles, then 5 miles at marathon pace, 8:38, 8:21, 8:36, 8:45 and 8:37 then cooled down with two more.  My heart rate was up to 176 on the MP miles, so I had a little bit left in the tank but didn't want to push it, and I am plenty tired tonight anyway.  Warmed up and cooled down very gently, nursing my groin, it seemed to hold up pretty well during the faster miles.  It has felt stiff today but with a night's rest it should be good to go again in the morning.  Looks like the weather is going to let up a little bit again this weekend, back down to low 70s, but not sure of humidity.

76F, 95% humidity, wind E 1 mph.  Clear and calm, nice weather.  Ran 7.73 miles in 1:08:53, average overall pace 8:55/mile, regular shoes.  Warmed up 1 mile then ran 6 at marathon pace, 8:30 (150), 8:23 (160), 8:23 (167), 8:33 (169), 8:18 (175), 8:13 (180), maximum heart rate 184, so 1 mile further than yesterday and faster average pace (8:24) in about the same conditions.  Ran about 3/4 mile cooldown, had to quit early because of schedule issues.  I have been sitting in conference rooms all day long without much chance to move around, makes me very stiff.  I woke up this morning with a sore back, could hardly move.  Went through my stretching sequence for my back and realized in the process that my groin was still improving despite running fast yesterday.  Actually felt better running than walking around, so I ran fast again today and have been sore all day.

My client walked in today with a cup that had brown foam on the top.  I asked him if it was a root beer float.  He said no, it was frappa-whappa something or other.  That was embarrassing, but I really wanted a float.  We are done with  the meetings now and everybody is happy, hoping for an easy day tomorrow, easing into a long weekend.

77F, 97% humidity, wind calm, partly cloudy, rain moving in, will be cooler in the morning.  Perfect running weather out there this morning.  Ran 11.22 miles in 2:00:15, average pace 10:43 per mile, low heart rate and flat shoes.  Ran hard yesterday and again tomorrow, so this morning was a chance to get some miles on my flat shoes.  It worked pretty well, feet, ankles and calves tired but doing fine.  Pretty happy with a 10:43 average in these conditions.  The main after-effect of running hard is cramping.  I got a mega-cramp yesterday sitting in a conference room, taking comments on a construction contract and entering them on my laptop.  It wasn't really a situation where it was appropriate to scream, even though the other side made me want to vocalize for other reasons.  So I just smiled, calmly offered a couple of constructive comments, typed away and slowly died inside from the pain.  It was a long one too, took a couple of minutes for my hamstring to relax, what a relief when it finally did.

My wife was awake when I got up this morning.  She said our daughter came in late last night, a day early.  She goes to college in San Marcos and turns 21 on Monday.  This girl has had a lot of ups and downs, she makes me mad pretty often, but my heart goes out to her more than any other kid.  So vulnerable and sweet, so unsteady.  Looking forward to a nice holiday weekend with the family, hope y'all are too.

73F, 91% humidity at start, 74F, 87% humidity at end, wind calm then N 5 mph.  Wonderful running weather, although admittedly we were planning on high 60s with low humidity.  That system is still trying to move in but it didn't arrive in time for our run.  But we were warriors and gutted it out. 

Ran 2 miles to my friend Wade's house then drove to the Y to run with the early, early group.  They started at 4:45 and were doing 20 but Wade only wanted to do 15, which I was fine with me because I wanted to run the first half MP + 1 and the second half closer to MP, wasn't sure I could pull that off for a full 20.  We ran about 9:30 for the first half and 8:30 to 9:00 for the second half.  We averaged 9:05 for the 15 miles, faster than our 9:19 last week in cooler air.  Then drove back to Wade's house and I ran back home plus another mile.  Very stiff to start from his house but loosened up and ran the last mile in 8:30, didn't know I could do that.  I think running a lot at MP this past week has helped, I feel stronger.  Overall I ran 20.03 miles in 3:03:49, average pace 9:13 per mile, regular shoes.  All systems are go, no lurking injuries that I know about.  I have two more long runs before starting my taper.

Not a 70-mile week, but a miracle to get this many hard miles this week considering where I was on Monday.  My son called me "Wolverine".  He said that is the guy on Ninja Turtles who transforms himself out of every injury, or something like that.  I don't know this stuff.  I seem to get hurt a lot, I think it is a function of age or wimpiness, but happy to be able to recover quickly, I'll take what I can get.