I waited until today for my midweek run because my legs (mostly inner thights) were still sore from the P90x legs workout on Monday. Why is it that every other muscle group is sore for like a day maybe, yet that workout always makes me sore for three or four days? Kind of a pain in the butt (sometimes literally). Fortunately, though - the soreness appears to be avoiding the quads and other heavily used running muscles, so that is good.
The other challenge has been how to get a run in without either leaving work rediculously early (bad option), getting up rediculously early (worse option) or running at night (another worse option). I ended up deciding to give a shot to changing while at work, going for a run there, and then coming home. With only a few weeks before the marathon, at which point I'll likely do most of my running on weekends until the sidewalks get cruddy, the number of instances where its a challenge to squeeze in these mid-week runs are few and far between.
Anyhow, the only other unknown was going to be the sidewalk and narrow road situation - pretty much every road I mapped out I had been on before in my car, but I never took much notice at the time as to the sidewalk situation. There was one particular stretch I knew that I'd have no sidewalk, so I went along that section first while there was still plenty of light. The other question was the terrain - normally the route I take on these mid-week threshold runs is fairly flat - but there were going to be some additional inclines on this one.
My plan was to start out with the typical mile or so warm up, followed by about eight miles at a HR of 160, with the last mile at a HR of 150 for cooldown. Everything was going pretty well until about mile 4, when I started noticing it raining. Rain was in the forecast, but it wasn't raining when I started, so I was hopeful that maybe it wouldn't rain at all. It's not that running in the rain is a problem in itself (I actually like it - very cooling), but it creates puddles. On the other hand, if things are going to get wet, I'd just as soon have them be drenching. It seems like maybe someone was reading my mind, because within about 15 minutes, it started pouring. At first I avoided puddles, but it was raining heavy enough that my socked got waterlogged and shoes filled up with water anyway. At that point, avoiding a puddle isn't worth the energy.
Something strange happens to me when a cool rain comes.. On a humid, sunny day I can be running at a HR of 150 and feel labored. But put me in a cool rain, and I can feel just fine with a HR of 170 - which is typically getting into the range where my endurance starts to drop off. To me, its an example of how much energy and effort the body puts into cooling itself - when it is raining and you get that cooling effect for free, so much more energy can go into a faster pace. So today when it was raining, I noticed that my HR was close to 170, but my pace was also around 7 min/mile or faster. I had to make an effort to slow down a bit to try and keep it under 165, because I still had a few miles to go.
By the time I finished up, it was getting dark. The last mile or so I probably should have had a light with me - or at least something other than my dark blue shirt. I got to thinking that maybe one option for the future would be to get up early, drive to work and go for a run at that point. That'd give me a little over an hour of time to 'wake up' - as a person who doesn't drink coffee, I'm often a slow riser and take my time to get moving in the morning. Then it occured to me that perhaps next spring, I might look to do some bricks where I ride my bike into work (about an hour), followed by a run of anywhere from 5-10 miles. It all sounds good until the morning-of when the alarm clock goes off, though.
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