26.2 Quest

4 miles in the rain - negative splits

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....

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

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!

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.