Getting Tougher

First off congratulations to Jen and to Quinto Sol for setting PR's at CIM!

This past week was tough to get running.

Last Tuesday I did 8 miles on the treadmill at the gym. Did a first mile @ about 9min/mile pace and then tried to do the rest at 8min/mile but was feeling a bit pooped at the 3 mile mark. SLowed it down to 8:15 pace or so for mile 4 and then slowed it down again to 8:30 pace for the remaining 5 miles. Probably not too recovered after the semi hard race on Sunday.

I didn't run on Thursday or Friday even though I was supposed to. Thursday was supposed to be a moderately difficult 6 mile LT run at 6:53 pace, but I just didn't feel like it. Skipped the Friday run also. Not too good.

Headed to the gym on Saturday in the hopes of doing the 6 miles LT run that I had skipped, but that went kinda blah. Did 2 miles slow and then wanted to do 6 miles at 7 min/mile pace. Got through about 2 of the LT miles and then had to stop to walk for 2 minutes. Tried to do another 2, but bailed after only one more mile. Gave up on that.

Yesterday, we got dumped on for the first snowfall of the season. With the relatively light 5 miles on Saturday, I wanted to try and do the 18 miles that I was supposed to do for a long run. Left home at around 9:00am in the morning but my brain clearly wasn't working cause it was pretty clear that since the sidewalks and roads weren't clear and there was a good couple of inches on the ground that I wouldn't be able to do the run. Bailed on that and went to the gym later in the afternoon to get my run in. For some reason, I had thought the gym closed at 8pm when in fact it closed at 7pm. I thought it was kinda weird that I was the only one left at 7pm . The maintenance guy seemed kinda pissed when he stormed over and told me I had to go at 7:10pm. Whoops. Anyhow I was able to squeeze in 16 miles on the treadmill.




What I find kinda interesting is that during the 2nd hour, my HR seemed was a bit lower than it was during the first hour even though the 2nd hour was 0.1 mile/hour faster than the first one. During the last little bit I was trying to ramp up the speed to 7.5 miles/hour but I had to stop after 2 miles cause of the maintenance guy. I think it may have something to do with whether I'm getting proper cooling. The first hour I typically find very uncomfortable, but by the 2nd hour I've usually built up enough of a sweat that my body starts cooling down a bit. Maybe that has something to do with it.