Freethinker ~ Freerunner

I ran 15 today in my new 1260's.  The heat and humidity of 77 degrees and about 72% respectively took away from the usual new shoe excitement.  It also squashed my plans to run the final third of this run at a moderately faster pace the the first two thirds.  I believe my time goal this morning was also compromised by me still going through the learning curve on proper recovery runs.  More on that later.  

I planned on breaking the run into five miles segments running at AP's of 8:40, 8:24, and 7:44 for each successive segment.  My actual AP's came in at: 8:30, 8:12, and 8:08 respectively for the three segments.  I suppose if I'd slowed it down for the first two segments and stuck with the plan I would have had an easier time hitting the goal pace for the third segment.  I should note that this particular stretch of 15 miles, which is a nice out and back from my house, has the hills in all the wrong places.  The final 5 miles include 100 feet of elevation gain.  This total run has 453 feet of elevation gain. 

I'm still learning about proper recovery.  That is one of the things I need to get better at.  I have a tendency to go out too fast and then get faster when I'm feeling good on the days that I should be taking it easier.  I have known this for some time, but I still have a hard time make myself slow down.  This week I'm going to focus on proper recovery runs starting tomorrow.  I'm not sure what distance I will do tomorrow, but I will keep the pace at or slower than 8:30.  

Recovery run at AP of 9:02.  It feels good to simply jog sometimes.  Temp 77 with humidity of 87%.  

I took four days off because I was feeling slightly over trained, and I wanted to begin marathon training feeling strong.  I think this little bit of time off was just what I needed.  I could tell my legs and muscles were healing up and getting stronger by yesterday morning as I walked through the parking lot to work.  

This morning I ran a real easy 3 miles at an 8:30 AP.  The temperature was a very nice 68 with a very not nice 96% humidity.  I'll be in Branson next week so I will be training on unfamiliar trails and blogging about it here as I go.  I've been looking forward to this trip since March.