august 2010

week in review (8/23 - 8/29)
total miles: 39.15 (40 planned)
time spent running: ~ 6 hrs 28 mins
avg hr: 165.20
avg pace: 9:42/mile
off days: 2

for the record, saturday's 17-miler put me at just shy of 40-miles and i didn't know it until later. i was not going to go out for a .85mile run on sunday just to round it up and i did not really need to push the mileage seeing as how i ran 29 miles last week and 15 miles the week before that. i'm already pushing the 10% rule.

i did, however, get out for a short bike ride on sunday with josh. i got a flat around mile 2.5 and my tire was finicky and didn't want to be repaired, but it cooperated eventually. i wore my recently-purchased pair of cycling shorts which just felt like a big cushion-y diaper. seriously that pad thingamajigger could not be any bigger.

sunday (8/29) bike ride: 10.70 miles, 44:45 (~14.2mph), avg hr 156, hot and sunny

overall, august was a slight improvement from july, but then again it didn't take much. i thought i'd done better with consistency but i guess i'll have to work a little harder in september.

august 2010
total mileage: 88.65
time spent running: 14:10:24
days off: 15 (a week less than july? guess that's semi-improvement)
abs/yoga: 10 ab workouts/1 yoga session
avg resting hr: dunno
avg max hr: 190.58
avg temp: 80.18*

august 2009
total mileage: 200.92 (aug '08 i ran ~145mi)
time spent running: 29:09:50
days off: 8
avg resting hr: 50.60
avg max hr: 176.57

oh how i've slipped and slided in a year...

bright ideas

sometimes i get these brilliant ideas that seem fun, until it's actually time to do them. like once i talked my best friend into getting up at 2am to drive to the beach to watch the sunrise*, or the few times i talked her into running a marathon without sufficiently training, or most recently - this past friday afternoon when we decided to meet up with her bootcamp class at 4am on saturday morning for a long run. her bootcamp class that meets a good 30-40 minutes away from my house...

good morning to me!

needless to say when i went to bed around 12:30 and woke up at 3, i wasn't quite thinking that this idea was that fun anymore. i made it to the meetup spot and we were off on the run. about two miles in i needed a pit stop, the only thing open at that hour is waffle house... yeah. we overheard some cops discuss setting up a perimeter and scoping out a place before they took off with their siren wailing (we're assuming a drug bust of sorts).

about a mile after the waffle house stop, we regrouped and played touch football (this was a bootcamp class after all). it was 4:45am and dark, so that was interesting. no one got whacked in the face with the ball but we did all leave with wet socks and shoes, which is always good when you still have 13 miles or so to go. we ran by a bar that was still open (most bars here close at 2am) and drunkards were stumbling out, pointing their keys in the air to find their car. why yes, we'd love to run on the road with you behind the wheel. we had a stop for snacks/water at a (manmade) waterfall, and didn't follow the directions properly around mile 13 so we ran our own route back to tack on some extra miles.

quick stop for bananas, oranges and grapes

my brain wasn't operating well enough at 3am to remember to grab gu's

in the end, a long, slow 17-miles done. slower than i would have liked, but the last time i ran double digits was 5/29 (12 miles), a solid three months ago, i'm sure i haven't lost any stamina since then right?

saturday (8/28) am run: 17 miles (2:56:12), avg pace (10:21), avg/max hr (149/173)

there were two walk breaks in there; at least i got my "easy" heart rate back under control

7/17: 8 miles
8/22: 8.15 miles
8/28: 17 miles

this is totally normal long-run progression, right?

*the sunrise trip (2007)