The Next Step

Well the weekend was a bust for running but was great for time with the family.  I will take a great time with the family any day.  Back at it again this morning.  It was warmer (68) but calm.  I felt good after the two days off but just ran easy to kind of get back in the groove.  I did add in 6 x 100 m strides at the end and ran them pretty hard. Trying to get my legs used to running faster.  Hoping for a good week of running as I travel down to Huntsville.

68:45 (7:38 avg)

Huntsville, AL:  Warm and humid morning down here.  Definitely hotter thatn I am used too lately.  Today I planned on doing 4 miles at tempo pace around 6:40.  I did a 3 mile tempo last week so wanted to step it up a notch.  I started off with a couple of easy miles to get warmed up and felt good.  After that ran the 4 tempo miles.  The first mile took me a little while to get going but it still felt good.  I felt a lot more comfortable on the 2nd and 3rd mile and just tried to stay relaxed.  The last mile was good also but started to feel the effort in my legs.  Overall it was a good run and I felt like I had definitely stepped it up a notch.  Here are my spilts for the tempo:  6:40, 6:36, 6:32, 6:29.  It is always good to have each mile go a little bit faster.  This was a lot more consistent than the tempo that I did last week.

50:23 (7:12 avg)

Huntsville, AL:  I had some early morning meetings today so wasn't able to get out early.  I ran after work right before dark.  It was still hot (86) outside but at least the sun was going down so felt a little better.  I just ran an easy recovery run around the work campus.  Felt pretty good.

56:36 (8:05)

Huntsville, AL:  I got early this morning and it was warm (mid 70's) but calm.  I wanted to do some faster running today so decided to do 10 x 1:00 with 1:00 recovery.  I ran 3 miles easy then did the repeats.  I ran them about 5:50 pace so they were pretty good.  I felt good during the repeats but the last couple the recovery time felt short.  I am finding it hard to keep my mileage up while traveling.  I am thinking that I might have more luck running shorter distance but twice a day when I travel to try to work around the meetings.  I might give that a shot on the next trip.

54:15 (7:45 avg)

Back home today and it was a nice morning.  I felt sluggish this morning getting going.  Just didn't have a lot of energy.  I had thought about going long today but the body just felt drained so I thought it would be better to just take it easy and not push it too much.  All the travel and work stress I think is having its toll.  Next week will wrap up our busy time for the year so hopefully things will get better.  It was just nice to get in some mileage today.

1:12:30 (8:03 avg) 

Our church had a 5k today to raise money for an inner city youth program that we support.  It was very low key and I ran it more like a hard tempo.  I went over early and helped them setup and then was able to get in a 2 mile warmup before we started.  It was a nice morning with lower temps (around 60) but still pretty windy.  When we started the run I tried to go out controlled and not push it too much.  I was hoping to run around 6:30 miles but hit the first mile in 6:20.  I felt pretty good but slowed down some on the second mile and came through in 6:25.  I was able to keep the pace pretty consistent finishing up and ran the third mile in 6:21.  I finished in 19:36 which I was happy with since I didn't really treat this like a race.  I think the course was a little short I had it at 3.08 on my Garmin but still a decent result.  I did a little jogging around after but had to leave quickly to go to my daughter's soccer game and then after the game we went to Kentucky for a family reunion.  It was a very busy day and I was glad to get a good workout in and a few miles.