Mileage-wise, it was a step back week. Outside of running, things were kind of chaotic.
On Wednesday, my parents had to put down their cat, Willie. He was 17 years old, so he had a pretty long life. He had arthritis, and he reached the point where he really couldn’t walk on his own, so it was time. It’s still pretty tough, though. I’ll miss him.
The forecast for Irma started out looking pretty bad for Charlotte, but as the track shifted west, the potential damage here went down significantly. Still, watching the forecast was stressful, and it’s going to cause a slight change to my schedule, but more on that later.
And to top it all off, I was on call this weekend. It’s over now, and I guess it wasn’t terrible. I was able to sleep through the night both nights, so there’s that.
Weight Check: 167.7 pounds, up 1.3 from last week. Lower mileage plus stress-fueled eating equals weight gain. I don’t know if next week will be less stressful, but hopefully I can buckle down a bit. I know my runs would be slightly easier if I could just drop a couple of pounds. We’ll see.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 7 miles easy | 7.01 |
| Tuesday | 6 mile rolling hills run. | 6.01 |
| Wednesday | 5 miles easy | 5.01 |
| Friday | 10 mile run (2 miles easy, 6 miles at 11:00-11:15/mile pace, 2 miles easy) | 10.01 |
| Saturday | 5 miles easy | 5.01 |
Total: 33.05 miles
Monday was Labor Day, so I had time to go over to the McAlpine Creek/Four Mile Creek Greenways. The weather was pretty nice. My legs were tired early on, most likely due to my long run on Saturday, but they got better as I went along. I stopped at a water fountain just after the 3 mile mark. I kept the effort easy except for the last quarter mile or so. Overall, it was a pretty good run.
So Tuesday’s run was a little different. Instead of hill repeats, my coach described it like this: “Have fun with the route and do not be too precise, just get in some changing terrain.” The weather was humid but not too warm. My legs felt pretty tired going up the hills, but I expected that. I don’t know that I had fun with the route, but I hit at least 7 different hills (maybe 8, there’s one that you could argue is part of another hill, or you could argue that it’s separate). It may have been tougher than the usual hill repeats, since the hills were more spread out, but I survived.
Wednesday was warmer and humid. My legs felt OK for the most part, but it was one of those runs where it seemed like they just didn’t want to move very fast. I did a little better on the last two miles, though. Not a great run, but I got through it.
I knew I’d be on call for the weekend, but I figured I could get 10 miles in before work on Friday, so that’s what I did. I really lucked out weather-wise, it was the best weather I’ve seen since May. My legs felt fine.
I managed to hit my pace goal on each of the first 5 miles of the middle section. I sped up a little bit at the end of the last mile, but still was only about 10 seconds faster than the goal, which isn’t too bad. For miles 3-6, I felt like I had to speed up and slow down more than I’d like in order to get to the right average pace on each mile. On mile 7, I finally felt like I found the right pace, and even early on mile 8 (before I sped up) my pace was just about right. I probably ran a little faster than I needed to on the last 2 miles, but it was still fairly comfortable.
I did not get paged during my Saturday run, so there’s that. However, I did have to deal with yard sales. See, twice a year my neighborhood has a community yard sale, and while not everybody participates (I didn’t), there are a bunch of people who do, and so there are cars parked near each yard sale, and a bunch of cars coming and going. Normally on Saturdays, I go run somewhere else and only have to deal with yard sales and their related traffic on my way out of my neighborhood and on my way back in, but because I was on call, I had to stay close to home. It was fairly annoying, but I survived.
As for the run itself, there was lower humidity, which was nice. My legs felt OK. I was pleasantly surprised by how consistent my pace was on miles 2, 3, and 4. I kept the effort easy except for right at the end.
There’s one mildly amusing note about my on call. Normally, I’m worried about getting a run in without getting paged. Well, Friday evening I got paged, and when I was done, I went to bed. The next morning, I remembered that I was supposed to do some foam rolling Friday night. D’oh! I did it Saturday evening instead.
Next week, I’m going to do my workout run on Monday before the rain gets here. It’ll still be a little bit breezy, but the worst wind won’t get here until late Monday. We won’t have to deal with anything close to what Florida or even Georgia will be dealing with, but it looks like Tuesday morning won’t be great for running, and I may just do my run on the treadmill instead. We’ll see. Also, next Saturday, I have an 18 miler.