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March 26, 2006
Work Hard, Play Hard
As projected, there was a lot of time spent working this weekend. I worked late on Friday, most of the day on Saturday, and part of this afternoon. It definitely did not leave much time for any kind of social life. At least there was enough time to play some-run. Working late on Friday wasn't a big deal, it is my usual day off from running. After the disastrous workout on Thursday night, the day off was definitely necessary. Looking back at it, at least I know the reasons it was so bad. It is better to know why the workout was bad than to not know why it was so terrible.
Yesterday morning was one of those mornings where it was kind of hard to figure out what to do. It started with the weather, I wasn't too sure how much to put on. I finally decided to do pants, a thick long sleeve, a fleece vest, gloves and an earwarmer. It was about forty degrees, but I felt a lot colder than that. There weren't many people around for our run, we must have scared everyone off last weekend when we took the hilly route. This ended up being problematic, the bulk of the group that showed up does their long runs fast, really fast, around 6:30s. The rest of the people who showed up were only going to run about an hour while I had 16 miles on tap. Then those people decided to try to stay as close as possible to the front group. I was falling off the back of the pack and wondering if I was really going that slowly. Just before four miles I did catch a break, Usiah, a crazy dog came after T and I encountered it as well. He did not listen at all to his owner and decided to run out in front of cars as well. Somehow, Usiah didn't get hit, although if he had been a person, he probably would have been hit.
Right after the run-in with Usiah, I was on my own. It took another mile or so to find a comfortable pace. I did take a look at my watch at the five mile mark, and realized that I was not running that slow to be falling off the back of the pack. At five miles, the running time was well under 35 minutes, way too fast for a long run. The rest of the way out was uneventful. I stopped at the gas station at the halfway point, which I reached four entire minutes faster than the last time on this course. Here, I used the bathroom and started to blow my nose since all the phlegm was working itself out.
On the way back, I started to feel warm. After about fifteen minutes on the way back, I started to have a coughing fit. This fit was so bad that it required stopping because I couldn't cough so fiercely and run at the same time. Some of the phlegm came out, a good thing. I was feeling wheezy since my lungs were definitely not clear. I decided to take off my earwarmer and wrapped it around my wrist. Going up the massive hill another twenty minutes later, I had the same problem. As nasty as it was, I coughed up more phlegm, but at least I was getting it out. I unzipped my vest part way and took off my gloves for the rest of the run. Once I got back on the main road, I felt a little bit better than going up the hill. I did time one of the last miles going in and it was a 6:45, so even if I did crawl up the hill, it wasn't that slow.
When I got back, I was pretty beat. It was a long run that was faster than planned. I walked over to the track and walked a few laps to relax. After that I went to the gym and rode the bike for a bit. I lifted some, something that I've been neglecting. There are only a few more weeks to do the lifting before race season starts and then the lifting goes out the window.
My runs today were flip-flopped. Usually on Sunday I do my longer run off the roads in the morning. Today I was supposed to meet the techies to do some tests on the treadmill in the afternoon, so I did my shorter run in the morning. I went to a park that I hardly ever run at because there simply isn't that much to do in this park unless you want to loop back over and over again. I was wearing the HRM to make sure that it was an easy run, but for some reason it didn't register at all when I was running. It registered when I was driving to the park and driving home, just not during the actual run. It was dreadfully slow, on grass with lots of goose droppings. The weather was on the dreary side-cool and a bit of drizzle. It was about five miles.
This afternoon was supposed to be treadmill testing for the techies, but we ended up being locked out of the building. He was late, as always. He showed up three minutes before I was going to leave. Then when he tried to open the building, he didn't have the right key. He went to get his other keys, but none of those opened the door either. This was just wonderful since I still didn't have my run in and it was starting to get late. I drove down to the track and did the river loop. The weather had greatly improved by then, so it was pretty pleasant to run in the afternoon. If I had gotten there five minutes later, it would have been too dark to do this run since the area isn't someplace that I want to run alone in the dark. I haven't put today in my log, but I think that I ended up with 70 or 71 for the week, a nice start back.
This is long enough, there is a reason that I don't like putting more than one run into an entry-it gets entirely too long!
Posted by Blondie at March 26, 2006 07:48 PM
Comments
Maybe I missed it in an old blog entry, but I was just wondering what you are doing with the 'techies'. Are you involved in some sort of HRM research?
Your blog is very enjoyable to read, hopefully I will be as fast as you one day soon ;D
Posted by: Red at March 27, 2006 09:26 AM