What an incredibly beautiful morning. I've been continually astounded for the past month and a half at how perfect the running weather has been. And today was as good as it gets.
Got started my run at 6:05 with a clear sky full of stars. 50 or so degrees and I was really comfortable in shorts and a tshirt
Wore my nathan pack forthe first time in a while and was reminded how much I like that thing. All except for the sticky hard to open mouth piece.
I have been itching for a long run lately and today I finally found the time. But I needed to be back by 8:30 to take Abe to his last soccer game.
So I planned to run out on the dry creek trail for 1:15 minutes easy, and then come back a little harder paced because its uphill on the way back.
The first 4 miles were super easy with HR in 120's at 8:30 pace. Then the next 4 were in the 130's for HRwith about 7:45 pace.
Then a guy named Brett randomly joined the trail and we were running a low 7 min. pace together and chatting for 3-4 miles and I kind of lost track of the time chatting with him.
I looked at my watch and realized it had been 1:20 so I bid Brett farewell and turned around for home, curious if I would make it back in 1:10 what took me 1:20 on the way out and downhill.
For a couple miles I was in the 140 HR range running 7-7:15 pace. Then I picked up the pace a bit in order to try to get home on time.
The next 4-5 miles were in the 150 HR range running between 6:30-6:45 pace and just feeling really good. I was kind of holding myself back a bit all run so far and this section the sun was out and I was fully warmed up and ready to roll. Plus I knew I needed to get home faster than I went out.
The last 2 miles go up hill pretty steadily. My hips and core started getting tired at this point, and I started having a tougher time pushing below 7 min. pace. Probably the slight incline plus the legs getting tired.
Then once it started going uphill steeper though I was digging that and was able to push the HR up into the 160's for the last mile and keep the pace around 7:20 which felt great. I saw a guy about a third of a mile away up the hill, and I ended up just blowing by him at about 7 min. pace a few minutes later.
And as I turned onto my street the clock ticked over to 2:30. Perfect! I paced it perfectly, got a nice solid 2 miles of tough pushing to finish a fantastic run on the morning and actually made it home on time with more miles than I anticipated.
19.5 miles - 2:30 - 7:44/mile - 141 avg Heart Rate. - 550' ascent/descent - good times. It was nice to finally get out for a longer run after a 45 day hiatus from longer than 2 hour stuff.
| 