I somehow managed to avoid Hermine. The rain hadn’t started yet when I ran Friday morning (although with the humidity it felt like it was about to start any minute), and it moved out late Friday night, so other than a little bit of debris and a refreshing light breeze, it had no effect on my Saturday run.
I retired my 4th and final pair of Brooks Adrenaline GTS 15 shoes after my Thursday run. I’m going to put up a post as a tribute to them this week. The Adrenaline is the only running shoe I’ve ever worn, and the way Brooks does it, they release a new version in late October/early November each year, and the number corresponds to the following year, so the current model, released late last year, is the 16 (I’ve got two pairs of them now), and the 17 should come out late next month. When the new model comes out, the old model drops in price. So I bought my 4th pair of 15s last November after the price drop.
I normally retire my Adrenalines after 400 miles. I probably could run in them a little longer than that, but I’d rather retire a shoe a few miles too early than a few miles too late. I keep a rotation, 2 pairs at a time, and the older pair usually has about 200 more miles than the other pair.
This week, in addition to the tribute to my old pair of shoes, I’ll be posting a couple of old race reports from 2014, the Lungstrong 15K (still the only 15K race I’ve ever done, because they’re hard to find), and the Charlotte Checkers 5K (Will run for hockey tickets). They were both pretty uneventful races where I ran well.
I finished August with 150.5 miles, my highest mileage month so far this year. It would have been more without my trip to Portland, but honestly, I wouldn’t trade my trip to Portland for anything. (Well, maybe a Boston Qualifier, but that’s it.)
Weight Check: 162.4, down 1.1 pounds from last week. I’ll take it. I fell off the wagon on Tuesday, and got a Mountain Dew. Thursday I got a Pepsi, only because the vending machine was out of Mountain Dew. I had a beer with my friends Wednesday evening. Otherwise, I mostly stayed away from junk food.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Easy 7 | 7.01 |
| Tuesday | 3 mile warm up, 8 x 1:00 Repeats (9:00/mile) with 2:00 recovery, 2 mile cool down | 7.16 |
| Thursday | Easy 7 | 7.01 |
| Friday | Easy 7 | 7.01 |
| Saturday | 14 miles LSD | 14.01 |
Total: 42.2 miles
This was my highest weekly mileage so far this year.
Monday was hot and humid. My legs felt OK, in spite of the fact that I didn’t do a shakeout run the day after my race, so there’s that.
For once, my Tuesday workout was pretty simple (and didn’t involve hill sprints). My splits had an average pace of 8:53, 8:45, 8:52, 8:51, 8:47, 8:26, 8:19, and 7:40. All under my goal pace of 9:00, and I’m really happy with the last 3 in general, and that last one in particular.
Thursday ended up being my fastest average pace of the week. I guess the day off helped.
Friday was really humid with the approaching rain from Hermine. I didn’t try to push it too much, since I had run 7 miles the previous day, and had 14 coming up the next day. I survived.
Saturday was amazing. The storm cleared out, and it cooled down to 63(!) degrees. Beautiful. I took advantage of it, with an average pace that was almost a minute per mile faster than my last 14 miler two weeks ago. (It was also 10 degrees cooler, so that made a difference.) It was easily the best I’ve felt on a long run in months, and, had I not sped up on the last mile (9:57), I actually feel like I could have run farther than 14 miles. Crazy.
After I was done, I took this picture.
I really love running along Little Sugar Creek.
Next week:
Monday: Easy 7
Tuesday: 1.5 mile warm up, 1 mile @ Threshold (10:30/mile) with 1:00 recovery, 2 miles @ Threshold with 2:00 recovery, 1 mile @ Threshold with 4:00 recovery, 6 x 30 sec Repeats (9:00/mile) with 90 seconds recovery, 1.5 mile cool down
Thursday: Easy 8
Saturday: 15 miles LSD
Sunday: Easy 4
Monday’s going to be interesting. Not only is it Labor Day, but there’s also a holiday in India. It’s my turn to cover it, so I’ll be on call from 1 AM to 9 AM. Given the forecast, it would be a bad idea to wait until after 9 to start running, so I’ll just have to run around my neighborhood close to home and hope that I don’t get paged.
I’m back to one of the overly complicated (but usually effective) workouts. Also, it’s going to warm up again this week. Oh well, Saturday was nice while it lasted.