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July 28, 2004
Cold Summer
Well this is the coldest summer that I can remember. I woke up at 6:00 this morning and I was freezing! It is so odd. Right now I'm looking out the window at work and all I can see is haze and clouds. It is also the most humid summer in Colorado that I've ever seen. My hair has become a curly afro. Now, I love hot weather, so this is kind of a bummer, but it is nice to be able to sleep soundly and run almost whenever I want.
I should start with yesterday's workout. I drove up to Boulder and I knew that my stomach would present a problem. Eating lunch is really tricky on days when I have a workout. I had eaten a big spinach salad with raisins, almonds, hard boiled eggs, and bacon. Usually this salad sits pretty well but I could tell that it was not so much. So I was troubled by this and by the fact that my legs felt pretty dead after lifting weights Monday night. We started our warmup and I seriously felt like we were sprinting (at maybe 9:00 pace). Generally a bad sign. Darren was working with some of our runners on the track, so we hung out and stretched for a while, then did strides around the track. It was actually kind of nice to have a longer time to get used to the idea of running. I also think that this extended our warmup by 3-4 minutes which was nice, we usually warm up for about 15 minutes which is not quite enough. The workout involved four sets of fartleks of varying lengths. It was a fun, challenging workout that simulated race conditions really well. The group is so much fun, at present we have runners from about age 17 to runners in their early 50's. This is an amazing dynamic and everyone works really well together.
So that was a great workout and a fun evening. On the way back to Denver I stopped for dinner with my friend M. It was great to see him.
This morning, I got up, wished I hadn't, and started running. I was supposed to run 5-7 miles per my schedule. During the run, I decided to run anywhere from 4 to 8 depending on how I felt at the moment. At the end, I settled on 6 miles. My body felt pretty good although my legs were a little dead and I was hungry through the entire run.
I am trying to dial it back a little bit this week so that for the next two weeks, when I'm unemployed, I can run a lot. I am not good at dialing it back. But I really think it's a good idea and I'd like to take one day off this week which should work out well because of traveling. We'll see how much I can update through the next few days but I'd like to write a few entries.
Posted by barb at July 28, 2004 08:41 AM