Freethinker ~ Freerunner

I did not go to bed early enough to get up for a 5:30 AM run.  I need to try to get back in the 10:00 PM bed time habit.  That said, I did feel I had a pretty nice run this morning.  The temperature was a perfect 54 degrees when I left the house.  My average pace was 7:57.  

A nice long run today at 65 degrees, but with high humidity and little to no wind.  8:13 AP. 

The gnats were out in droves on certain parts of the trail like I've never experienced.  I was attacked by killer swarms of them multiple times.  At about three miles in I had them all over my face, up my nose, and in my mouth.  I could not use my forearms to wipe them off my face because they were all over my arms as well.  Yuck.  I'm sure in light of the other more  disgusting things we runners put up with a few gnats aren't so bad though.  

Kevin joined me at my two mile point and ran about 9 miles with me.  It was good to have the company for a majority of the morning. 

1 hour run this morning.  It was about 64 degrees with a slight breeze and a full moon.  8:05 AP.  I got 7 miles in before 6:45 and then got my neighbors yard cut and edged by 8:00.  It's going to be a good day!  Now off to work.  

One hour easy run at an AP of 7:54.  66 degrees with winds at about 6 mph.  It felt really nice out this morning.

It was beautiful out this morning.  Temperature about 57.  AP 7:45.  Since I had to stop once to tie my shoe and another time at a cross walk I will also report my average moving pace of 7:42.  I have been planning most of my weekly runs at relaxed even splits, but I felt like finishing strong this morning.  

Splits:

7:51

7:52

7:59

7:50

8:10

7:44

7:23

6:59 (AP at .74 miles)

I felt really good this morning.  Since I finished strong yesterday morning I set out to run an easier pace (8 minute miles) this morning.  When I finished my first two miles with ease faster than that I decided to push it just a little bit further.  I ended up finishing with an AP of 7:33 with my fastest miles on the back half. 

My short term training plan has been to run my long run on Sunday as usual, but to run nothing but one hour runs the rest of the week.  I have now done that for two weeks.  It is good way for me to see my progress.   I am able to gradually run farther distances within the hour each time I run with relative ease.

 I think I may do one more week of the one hour runs to see some more improvement before I begin to increase my run time.  I will then spend about three weeks at the new time gradually increasing distance within that time.  I did not get this from anyone's training plan.  I'm just sort of making it up as I go. 

Splits: 

7:51

7:43

7:38

7:33

7:32

7:34

7:20

7:07 (average pace of .95 mile split)

Easy 15 today.  It was a beautiful 60 degrees with a very nice breeze.  8:08 AP.  

My legs felt so sore getting out of bed and on the first mile.  I ran progressively harder on towards the end of last week and capping it off with my 15 mile long run.  It definitely caught up to me today.  AP was 8:21 today. 

I believe it was 70 degrees at 5:45 this morning.  Yes it is about to get hot out here.  

I ran Turkey Mountain with Kevin today.  I think it was somewhere in the upper seventies.  9:45 AP.  Both of us were pretty sore and walked a couple of the more technical hills.  I'm still recovering from the end of last week, and he is recovering from the xterra race in Arkansas over the weekend.   

I'm not sure what happened, but I think my entries from Monday and Tuesday vanished from the blog.  I'm going to have to go back and re-post them.  I admit I can't fully remember posting on Monday, but I know I posted on Tuesday about my Turkey Mountain run with Kevin.  

Today I ran with a nice cool breeze and about a 68 degree temperature.  AP of 8:04.

Now that is really bizarre.  After I posted this entry and hit the publish button, the missing entries from Monday and Tuesday had reappeared on my calendar.  Freaky.    

I woke up this morning to thunder and the sound of rain.  I checked my weather app and it appeared that I would have to wait about half an hour for the severe weather to pass.  So I went back to sleep for a little bit.  When I woke back up it was still raining but it looked like the worst was over.  I set out on my one hour and ten minute run with hardly a sprinkle of rain.  By the time I was 20 minutes into the run it had started coming down harder.  It was one of those runs where the rain gradually builds up to a bit of a down poor.  I ended up finishing soaking wet, but it did feel nice and we certainly needed the rain.  

AP of 7:51.  I think it was about 68 degrees with light winds and rain.  

I made it out the door at 5:40 this morning.  It was 69 degrees.  AP of 7:45.  This closes out 55 miles this week for me, which I believe is a high for the year. 

Update:  I just check my training logs back to January 2010 and discovered that my max mileage for one week is 54 miles.  So at 55 miles I just set a personal maximum for one week.  Woohoo!     

When I left the house I could swear I heard a rooster crowing somewhere in my neighborhood.  This is about the third morning this week I noticed it.  When I told Alisha about it she joked that it could be the reason why Ty started waking up at sunrise this week.  

I ran 15 this morning at 70 degrees at an 8:19 AP.  I decided I might start tracking humidity as well as temperature. 

I'm pretty sure the temperature is pretty close to what it was last week, but this week kicked my butt.  My AP last week was 8:08.  I can probably assign most of the slower pace to being a little (read: a lot) worn out from coming off of a 55 mile week as opposed to a 44 mile week the week before.  I could tell by the second or third mile that an 8:00 minute pace was feeling way to hard that early on.  By mile 10 I pretty much had nothing left in the tank, which is discouraging because I fueled more this week than last.  I took two gu's during this run as opposed to one.  I think I will need to definitely take a couple more weeks at this mileage to let my body adjust.   

Recovery run this morning at an 8:13 AP at 74 degrees with 77% humidity. 

I felt a strange kind of strain in the ligament or tendon that runs along the outside of my left foot up towards my ankle.  I think I just landed on it a little too hard coming around a hard turn as I got close to the neighborhood on my way back.  I felt the strain for about a quarter mile.  I am only mentioning it because I felt the same strain in what I think was the same foot yesterday during my long run about one mile from my half way point.  Just like today it showed up for about a quarter mile and then vanished.  I'm not sure where it came from yesterday, but I know today I cornered too hard and strained it.   

I felt pretty good this morning after not running yesterday.  I did cross train yesterday though.  I cut two yards and went to the pool.  Well the pool was more leisure than workout, but I'm considering it cross training since I did do a few laps.  

This morning the temperature was 76 with humidity of 77%.  There was a pretty good wind blowing from the south at 15 mph.  

My AP today was 8:04. 

71 degrees, 94% humidity.  I felt really strong this morning, and ran a pretty easy pace of 7:56.  Taking yesterday off really helped overcome the lagging soreness I felt when I woke up. 

I'm going to focus on sleep and nutrition going forward this year.  I have only been averaging about 6 to 7 hours a night, and I can tell I'm going to need more than that in order to fully recover from each workout. 

I've also been reading Scott Jurek's new book Eat and Run.  I'm about half way through it, and I highly recommend to it to other runners.  He chronicles his life story, including how his plant based diet helped him win Western States seven times.  He has lots of recipes for vegan meals at the end of every chapter as well for those interested.  I've been impressed with his running career ever since I read about him in Born to Run, and I've been slightly interested in the vegan or vegetarian diet since late February of this year.  It seems to be that many of the great ultra runners are either vegan or they incorporate a vegetarian diet into their daily nutritional plans.  Jurek claims that after he switched to the vegan diet he was able to recover much faster from long runs.  This all sounds appealing to me.   

I felt really good this morning.  It helped that it was about 67 degrees.  I think the humidity was 85% when I checked at 5:20, but now at 8:25 is is 69%.  My AP was 7:29.

I have been consistent in running my week day workouts without fluids, and only taking fluids on my Sunday long run for the past 4 weeks.  I will see how that goes as the summer warms up and as I begin to work tempo runs and intervals back in to my training here in a few weeks.  I think I have learned that I can run up to an hour and ten minutes at up to a 7:28 pace without needing fluids.  

Splits:

7:47

7:38

7:32

7:27

7:16

7:15

7:36

7:13

7:25

2:48 (.38 miles average pace 7:25)

It was 72 degrees this morning with 74% humidity.  The slight breeze made it a beautiful morning for a run, especially for this time of year. 

Kevin ran about 11 miles with me.  My AP was 8:08.  I would have had an AP much closer to 8:00, but Kevin slowed us down a little bit around miles 10, 11, 12, and 13.  It was no big deal though, because I was able to finish strong and make my last mile my fastest at 7:42.  And there is the benefit of having someone to talk to on these long runs.  Another benefit to slowing it down a little during the final third was that I finished and did not feel completely wasted.  I doubt I will even be really that sore tomorrow, which is awesome because I ran yesterday at a relatively harder pace than normal.  

8:07

7:56

7:50

7:56

7:48

7:48

8:05

7:59

8:03

8:18

8:47

8:40

8:53

8:07

7:42

I woke up feeling a little bit sore, which was a surprise because I thought I would not be that sore.  It was one of those Monday mornings where I had to tell my self just to put on my shoes and head out the door.  The first few steps are the hardest.  

The temperature was 74 and the humidity was 84%.  I saw quite a few bikes out this morning, and other runners.

I planned on today simply being a recovery run as is usually the case on Monday after the long run, but I ended up finishing a little faster than I started. 

8:37

8:11

8:16

8:01

7:53

7:57

7:35

7:45

5:41 (distance .75 AP 7:34)

Nice morning at 80 degrees and 55% humidity.  AP 7:36.  We finally got a break from the high humidity, which made it really nice out.  The winds felt a little stronger out of the south, but my weather app says only 8 mph.  

I planned on running the first six at a 7:30 pace and the last three at a 7:00 pace.  I was not able to do that.  I hope I'm still just adjusting to the higher mileage.  I thought that after taking yesterday off from running that today would be the best day to try some speed work.  To be fair to myself I did do about 40 minutes of strength work yesterday including squats, quads, and calves. 

I might try for this same run again on Saturday.  For some reason I usually clock my fastest times on Saturday, which is the day before my long run.  I've wondered if it is because it the the furthest day from my long run and my body just takes that long to fully recover.  

Splits:

8:23

7:49

7:42

7:43

7:33

7:34

7:23

7:26

7:05

AP 8:06.  Nice and easy this morning.  68 degrees and 62%.  

Easy run this morning.  72 degrees with 62% humidity.  When I returned I checked again and the temperature had actually dropped 2 degrees.  Weird.  I think we are finally moving away from highs in the 105's.  AP of 8:01.   

I felt like I was dragging a little bit this morning, and it probably has to do with getting less then 6 hours of sleep last night.  

I can think of nothing else to say about my run so I'll digress.  I'm a little shocked that the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare and the individual mandate in the historic ruling yesterday.  Is there no limit to the power of the federal government now?  It was a truly sad day for America and what's left of our free society.   

So now that I'm in my fourth week of 45 plus miles I've decided to start flirting with speed workouts again.  I haven't done anything fancy yet, meaning no track workouts or road intervals with recovery periods.  I've just done a few tempo runs.  

I may start with some interval training next week, although I've got the Firecracker 5k on Wednesday so I'm not sure how I will work around that.  I may try something on Monday and then rest on Tuesday as usual. 

Mile seven was my slowest.  This mile has a hill within it that is an increase in elevation of 53 feet.  The hill actually starts before I clocked the beginning of this mile.  If you look at the whole hill it is about 90 feet of elevation.  You can see from my splits that I never quite recovered from mile the hill on mile seven.  I think part of my problem this morning was that I did not fuel properly.  I was sweating a lot and I probably should have brought some Gatorade.  I'm going to try drinking a sodium blend before my next run of this type to see if it helps me last longer. 

8:32

8:04

7:44

7:37

7:12

7:12

7:58

7:23

7:21