4 miles in the rain - negative splits

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I woke up in the middle of the night to a major downpour. I thought - wow - this morning is a 4 mile run, I hope it slows down a bit before time to get up and get going.

When I rolled out of bed at 4:45 it seemed to have stopped raining so I proceeded to get ready and do all my Monday morning measurements. I was looking forward to my run on this rainy, 61 degree, 99% humidity morning. I finished up and headed out the door at about 5:15. When I walked out the door I noticed the rain had not stopped, but was very light.

The rain came and went the entire run, but since it had rained so hard overnight I had the wonderful enjoyment of puddle hopping, and trying to find all the puddles in the dark (or not find them as it be this morning) I did pretty good at missing most of them, but a couple times the light was not good enough to keep from the splash. I can only wonder how many worms lives were ended under the soles of my running shoes.

My run went really good, and I felt really good. I ended up with an 8:50 average mile on my 4 miler. I had negative splits of 9:26 - 9:15 - 8:45 - 8:16 which I was very happy with.

Well, I blew it....

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Well, I blew it. I got up this morning and had breakfast before my run. I got tired of never being able to eat breakfast on Saturday mornings because of my long runs. This is the only morning my wife cooks breakfast for me and I always miss it. So, I chose to eat breakfast and then go out after a bit of letting everything settle. I ate a yummy egg, sausage, hash brown, and toast at about 9:15 and then headed out the door at about 10:30.

By 10:30 the sun was nice and high, and hot. It was not too hot out, but with the sun and the almost 80% humidity it was rough. I planned on running 12 or 13, and on my way out strategically placed my water bottles and a gel for the run. I felt really good and my run was starting off really good. I then realized after the first mile that I was going out too fast.... in fact a good 30 sec a mile faster than my Half Marathon race pace. Considering I was going about the same distance I was starting to wonder when I would crash.

During the first few miles it was running through my head about how great of a blog post that would be. Me telling everyone how well the miles have been paying off and how I did a Half Marathon in training faster than when I did the actual race. All that came to a halt at about mile 5 when I started really feeling it. I ended up giving in and hanging up the towel at a 10k, under half of what I set out to do.

I am not upset, it was just some poor planning that got me where I was. I had a really good run, and probably the best ever 10k in training at just over 52 minutes. This is something I am happy with, I just wish I would have been planning a 10k all along, and not giving up on my 13 mile long run. I did what I felt I needed to do, my legs and all felt good, but I just pushed my body too hard under the circumstances. I think pushing myself on would have very possibly hurt me in some way.

8 before 6

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I arrived at my stashed water at 5:57 this morning. Not bad for 8 miles. I didn't run it fast which meant an early departure from the household. I walked out the door at 4:35 this morning knowing that I wanted to do 8 miles and if I was going to be successful that I needed to rise early and hit the pavement earlier than my normal 5:00 AM.

So far for the week I have just over 18 miles in, this looks like it will be close to a 30 mile week, which will be the most for me in one week, even considering the training days for the half marathon.

I am feeling much better since my last post last week when I was in the recovery mode from some food poisoning. I am still doing good and holding steady in the weight department as can be seen in my post on my other blog: blog.2big.org

I AM NORMAL..... at least today!

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OK, this isn't much about my running, but it does affect my running, and is a hugh deal to me so I am posting it.

I wrote up more about it on my other blog at blog.2big.org, but the short of it is..... I am 170 lbs today. I am sure it is because I was sick from food poisoning the last couple days, but I was close to this already so it wasn't just because of being sick. This 170 means I am normal according to the governments official BMI calculations. I will be bouncing back up over the next two days I am sure, but it was very cool to see today.

Because of the food poisoning I am still not feeling up to running today, so this week will not be much more than the 20 miles I have already put in. I may run a couple miles tomorrow depending on how I feel.

10 on the 10th

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From dark to dawn.... I usually start my run off in the dark and end my run in the dark, but today was different. I actually was able to start my run in the dark and run the morning light in. By the time I got home it was completely light, but still early enough that the sun had not come up to start warming it up.

My kids are out of school this week for spring break and since we didn't go anywhere I still worked. I did decide, however to take today and Friday off so I could spend some time with them. But, as it goes with younger teenagers, both of my daughters spent the night with friends last night. We did tell them that they needed to be home this morning because I didn't take the day off to spend by myself. :)

I had in my head that I would still get up at the same time and go running and then do a little work on my project at work. When the alarm went off at 4:30, and I knew I was not held to a schedule this morning it was all to easy to turn it off and give myself a bit more sleep. I ended up rolling myself out of bed at 5:30 and hit the road at 5:45. I had planned on doing 8 miles this morning but started to try to convince myself to only go 4 miles. The intelligent part, instead of the lazy part of me won out, and through a conversation in my head I told myself.... You are not on a schedule, why do you think you can't do the 8 miles? - So, I did 10 miles instead!

This was the first time I had run 10 miles since the Half Marathon, so I wasn't sure how I would feel in the last couple miles, but I felt really good and was pleased to see that I still have the half marathon distance fully in me. I have been really busy at work lately and been bringing a lot of work home so my distances have not been where they were pre-race, but I think it is now time that I start looking for and committing to which Marathon I will be running. I have put 20 miles in so far this week so the miles are starting to come back, but without a goal race I find it too easy to not put the miles in. That being said.... I am relying on my readers to hold my feet to the flame and ask me which marathon I will be doing..... constantly.... asking all the time.... annoying me.... until.... I.... commit.