Training Week 10

Last spring when training for Nashville's Country Music 1/2 Marathon with Team in Training, we had a training run in some nasty weather. It was spitting rain and the wind was blowing something fierce. Running north felt like I was pushing against a wall. Running south felt like I was flying. My run this past Wednesday was a bit like this, but not quite as bad. There was a crosswind out of the east that was pretty relentless. The 7-miler was the longest mid-week run to date. It went well even though I was confused because the mile marker were all shifted about 1/8 mile further south than they have been for as long as I can remember. I ran without a watch again so who knows how fast I was going. Got a slight scare when I heard a number of sirens heading towards Foster beach. When I got to the pier, there were 4 fire engines, a search helicopter and a number of police cars. With the waves as bad as they were, I feared someone had been swept into the water. By the time I arrived, onlookers informed me it was just a false alarm.

Thursday's run was supposed to be a 4-miler. I took Forest out with me. Like he has the past couple times I've taken him out, as soon as I make my turnaround, he decides he's done running. He'd rather sniff the grass, pee on trees, anything else but run. I'll coax him to start running again, and 50 feet later he stops in the middle of the path and then sits down. So stubborn. I finally got him to run for an extended period of time for the last 1/2 mile. He's such a punk some time.

The 15-miler on Saturday turned into a 14-miler. Liz wanted to cut it short so we decided to shave a mile off. We stopped to talk so many times that it became laughable. Combined with the water stops and stretching caused our ellapsed time to be 30 minutes longer than our watch time. I felt pretty strong until the last 2 miles or so when I started noticing my knees. Nothing too aweful and no lingering pains on Sunday either. Quick list of people we "ran into" - Erin Tobin, my Mom, Jeanine, Dorothea, Chris Vas, Kristin, and the Penguin, who may be referring to me as the "young man" he came across at the end of his run in this post.

Since the stap on my old watch broke, I'm debating whether or not to spend the $70 on a nice new heart rate monitor. Keith had a fancy one that he bought some software for to track all of his workouts on his computer. I was impressed by the charts he had of each of his workouts from the past months. With property taxes due at the end of the month, a new watch band may have to be the solution for now.