For Whom the Dogs Bark

59F, 100% and calm.  Good temperature out there but didn't run that well, legs still weak from Saturday most likely.  Ran 6.07 LHR miles before seminary, average pace 10:19 per mile, then got busy with work and didn't finish the run.  Came home after work and ran 8 more on the TM at a flat 10-minute pace.  Didn't hurt that Monday Night Football and the World Series were both playing.  It was almost painless.  Everything this week is going to be long and slow, possibly for the remainder of the year.  My legs are feeling the need to build up endurance, and I can feel the strength coming back when I run long and slow.  It feels good; time to start piling up the slow ones.

64F, 100% and calm.  Another foggy morning.  Did my run in two segments, interrupted by seminary routine.  Altogether 14.26 miles in 2:28:11, average pace 10:24 per mile.  Legs were pretty beat after doing 8 on the TM late last night, but at least I am back on schedule and now there is a full day to recover before the next one.

67F, 97%, SSE 5 mph.  A little warmer today but it didn't feel like it.  More of the same, this is my life now.  14.47 miles in 2:26:03, average pace 10:07 per mile, considerably better than yesterday, so that is encouraging.  I must be recovering from SGM and the half I ran on Saturday.

Only thing interesting was at mile 8, another front door opened and a large dog came at me.  I yelled at him.  The owner called him back and told me he was harmless.  I said "OK, no problem." and went on my way, even ran by the same house again on mile 12.  So progress.  Didn't apologize for yelling, though.  That is for later, I am only at Step 2 right now.

65F, 100%, calm and slightly foggy (kind of like me).  No dogs today, boring.  Did the same run as yesterday and it measured almost the same.  I knocked some more time off --  2:22:19, average LHR pace 9:51 per mile.  I had the cumulative average down to 9:43 at one point, but slowed at the end.  I did manage to stay under 10 minutes all the way through mile 12, though, and the last two were below 10:10, so it was a good day.  Legs definitely feeling it afterwards, but won't know until tomorrow if that means anything.

I'm going to do this same run a couple of more times to test my view that Garmins are pretty accurate.  Any particular measurement might be off, but they average out or it wouldn't measure the same course the same every time.  Stated differently, if the Garmin says a course is long, I think that means it is long.  A few tangents don't add up to a tenth of a mile -- maybe if you are running the outside lane on a 10K at the track, but not for most of the courses we run.

55F, 89%, NNW 13-18 mph.  The new running season has finally arrived, but I was already missing summer when I stepped out into the chilly breeze.  Hard to make me happy.  Woke up before the alarm and ran a slightly different route due to the seminary break being at mile 7 instead of mile 6.  I always feel less sleepy all day when I wake up ahead of the alarm.  There is apparently an iPhone app that senses your body movements in bed and the alarm is flexible; within a certain window it goes off when you are the peak of a sleep cycle, when you are almost awake anyway.  But I don't have an iPhone, too poor after buying them for my kids.  I wouldn't take one to bed anyway, too weird.  However, if I could rig it so that my kids' iPhones go off instead of mine, I might consider buying the phone and the app. 

More LHR miles, from now to eternity.  14.51 miles in 2:20:10, average pace 9:40, all under 10 except for the warmup miles.  Got a 9:18, which isn't a LHR PR but not that far away, and I improved every day this week from Tuesday on, with a big assist from the weather today.  Off to Temple to see my granddaughters for the weekend.  Sweet dreams.

66F.  Ran in Temple, Texas this afternoon.  The humidity felt low but by the end of the run I was pretty spent, quite a bit of wind and some respectable hills.  Ran 19.07 miles in 2:57:12, average pace 9:18 per mile.  Average heart rate 142, was unable to maintain LHR under these conditions unless I ran so slow I would never finish.  Ran the first lap with my daughter, right at 10K.  She was showing me the route, which included a mile or two against highway traffic.  That was a new experience seeing automobiles coming at me full speed, but I got used to it after a while.  We turned off the highway and at about mile 4 I tripped and fell down on a perfectly flat sidewalk.  I have some ugly knuckle abrasions that are a source of morbid fascination for my granddaughters on this Halloween weekend.  But no permanent damage.  It is my fifth fall, I remember each one.  One of these days I will fall the wrong way and that will be it.

After dropping my daughter off at her house, getting a drink and cleaning myself up I went out for another lap.  I knew I wasn't going to make it out for a third lap so I started looking for detours.  I headed on down the highway instead of turning onto the sidewalk, but that ended after a mile when three large canines of uncertain heritage and poor grooming headed my way.  I figured I was done for but they were across the busy highway and didn't press the issue after I turned around.  Then through a neighborhood which was uneventful.  Then I found a disc golf course which had a couple of miles of trails in it.  By now I was diligently searching for water.  I finally found a park with a drinking fountain and solved that problem.  Turns out the park had three miles of trails in it, very pretty.  Then I slogged it home, was hitting 9:30s about this point.

Following up on last week's half marathon in Huntsville, I got this picture from some friends.  The lady on the left, Shannon, is the daughter of some friends of ours -- we didn't know she is a runner and we found her at the race by accident.  She was running her first race ever and was the fourth woman finisher.  She beat me by 6 minutes.  She is ridiculously humble; some people just don't know how fast they are.  The other two are Wade and Linda.  Also Shannon's daughter.  We had a good time, even though I didn't get a good time.