Use it or Lose it

Labor Day (ie, a nice day to sleep in), but my daughter wanted to go running at 6:30 am!!  She needed to be somewhere by 9, so we just made it a quick run up city creek (PA5) and back.  And, quick it was with a blazing fast pace from our house to the city creek gate!  (I don't know how fast because neither of us had a garmin or watch, but based on my breathing pattern I'm guessing it was 5K pace.)

I hoped to get out for a longer run later, but spent the whole rest of the day doing yard work.  It is time for our "neighborhood" clean-up, and I had a lot of thorny bushes to hack down in the back yard.  I've got a lot of scratches now . . . so went my "Labor" day!

5 mile easy pace up to PA 7 in city creek and back.  Low energy - I'm slogged down with a head cold.

Short  run up to PA 5 in city creek and back.  Wanted to run my normal 5 miler, but I had an important morning meeting to get to, and I am still slogged down with my head cold so didn't feel like pushing the pace.

Darn, this week's running has not been as rigorous as I had hoped, but I think it is best to save my hill work and speed work for when I'm feeling better.  I sure hope I can get out for a good long run this weekend!

Beautiful day for running, and I'm so happy I finally got in a long run.  My plan was to run up city creek to the 4 mile marker, but somehow I missed seeing that marker (I'd only run up that far once before).  I finally passed the 5 mile marker, and decided with only .6 mile left to the very top I should just continue on.  So I did and am quite proud that I ran from my house to city creek and then all the way up city creek canyon until the road ends.  I never ever did that before and it was my goal to do that before winter came.  It was absolutely gorgeous running at the top of city creek!!  I felt really strong the whole time running uphill, and only stopped 2-3 times for quick water breaks. 

Only problem was after I got to the top, I was faced with running downhill for over 5 miles!  I was worried about hurting my knees so I walked the really steep downhill sections and then slowly jogged the rest of the way down.  Then ran the last 1.5 miles back up to my house.  No garmin, but I estimate I went a total of 14.2 miles today, with at most .7 miles of downhill walking, so I'm logging the total run at 13.5 miles. (I'm finally posting this entry on Monday morning, and I'm very happy that my feet and knees don't seem to be adversely affected from all the running I did.