Clyde's Comeback!

Did 4.2 miles at 5:10 a.m before meeting with Paul H. Then did the DC/ River road loop with Paul. It was lovely this morning with temps at 62 F. I knew this morning was going to  be nice because last night at 9 p.m it was already down to 80F. I'm hoping for an early fall... Running goes so much better when it's 70 F or cooler. Felt pretty good and am finally working some of the soreness from the hike last week out of  my legs. Who would have thunk hiking would trash my legs so bad... but it did. Hammy's and quads where worse than a hard 18-20 mile run down the marathon course. 

6.5 miles around the middle B-hills loop this afternoon. Temps are well below avg and it makes me happy. The run was just a basic old run. Nothing good nothing bad.  

Big workout morning. The workout was to do a 3, 2, 1 mile interval ladder at MP with 2 min recovery. 

3 mile warm up 

First 3 miles set- 5:34, 5:30, 5:09 I felt smooth on the first two as it rolled up and down a couple hills then the last mile is basically all flat and I'm not sure why it got so fast. 

Second 2 mile set- 5:42, 5:29 This is more where the pace should have been. First mile was up the hills through the industrial park (always hard) and second drops down on the main road and then flattens out. 

Last one mile- 5:22 Fairly flat and really dark as we run down the top part of the river trail. With no moon or street lights vision was hard down there. 

3.5 mile cool down back to the house

The workout turned out pretty good. Actually hit stuff a little faster than the paper plan said to. But on the cool down my stomach started to rumble and by the time we got to my house I was pretty sick. After the guys left I spent the next three hours with some diarrhea issues. I'm not sure where that came from. Kind of scary cuz I don't know how to prevent it in the future if I don't know the cause.  

DC/ River road loop. Nice and cool this morning (57F). I could be a real runner if I could run in temps like this every day. I was a little slow going after being pretty sick all day yesterday. Never really warmed up today as the pace was slow and EZ. However there was no soreness from the speed work yesterday morning... just some grogginess. 

5 miles this afternoon. It was only 95 F out (and I'm not saying that as a joke). I ran one mile up to drop some stuff off at a ward members house and then back to my house. Then I ran over to the park for a mile. I did two miles(4 big laps on the grass field) at the park in 5 fingers and then one more mile back home in the 5 fingers. It's been a while since I've did any barefoot running. I could tell my form was way out of whack. It's always nice to square things up.   

Around Stone Cliff and into B-hills then home. Another great morning with temps around 60 F. My calves were a little sore from running barefoot yesterday but they eventually worked themselves out. After the first couple miles the pace was under a 7 min avg... so not too bad. Time to start my mini taper for this weekends mock half marathon. I'm really actually pretty excited about it and am having real pre race jitters. Hoping for some good positive feedback from the legs.  

Out a little earlier today. It was kind of peaceful and dark running by myself. I did the DC/ River Road loop. Temps weren't as cool as the last couple days but not bad at all... 65 F. Legs felt pretty good. But yesterday my ankle started hurting for no reason and it was pretty sore today. I'd say a 6 out of 10. The only thing I can even think of that would be different from normal is the barefoot run I did the other day. Maybe that caused the soreness. I'll try to keep shoes on all day today- as walking around barefoot seems to stimulate the pain. If it aint one thing it's fifty as my granddad use to say. 

Trails half marathon in 1:12:54 a 5:34 avg at 13.11 miles 

Today we decided to reenact a race from 2007. The Trails half marathon from Gunlock to Ivans. In 2007 I ran a 1:14:33 to win the race on marathon pace effort. So the goal today was to run it faster than in 2007 but stay around MP effort and never go into the red lining half marathon push. 

So we measured out the course to straight up 13.1 miles, did 3 miles of warm up and then started the mock race. I had a drink sitting on the side of the road at mile 8. So I decided to go out fast enough to hit the times but EZ enough to feel controlled. The course is fairly tough as it rolls up and down basically the entire length. I figured today that it might be around 30 seconds to 1 min slower than the first half of STG.

Anyways up to the drink and GU I felt really smooth and knew I had something to give going into the bigger, longer hills at the end. Hit the 10 mile mark at 55:50 or so. Then really only had to work on the last climb (over a mile long pull into Ivans).

I was happy to see a big improvement from 2007 and felt like the effort was similar. Plus last night I was really sick and didn't get much sleep with a head cold, sore throat, and BAD runny nose. I was actually really surprised to run as good as I did today and am now home sick just like last night. It's like I had a little window to go run and the sickness is on both sides. And I don't feel an once of soreness. So I guess that's good too. 

4 mile cool down with all the guys to hit 20 for the day. Everyone ran pretty good today and I'm excited to see some big PR's from guys like Mike and James.