Freethinker ~ Freerunner

Hot! Hot! Hot!  It was 83 degrees when I left the house this morning at 6:00 AM.  The 10 day forecast has 102 degree highs every day for the next ten days.  Our summer heat in the Mid-West came early this year.

My time today was 1:48:03 at a pace of 8:18 miles.  I feel as though I am losing a little of my speed from where I was at during April and May at the end of my half marathon program.  I'm not totally worried about it though for two reasons.  I am in the process of increasing my mileage by ten percent per week and I don't want and I don't want to go too hard while also increasing mileage.  I want to get stronger as I go longer.  I also know that the heat has a little to do with my performance.  Running when it's 83 to 86 is a lot harder than running at 52 degrees.  In fact 52 is my PR temperature.  According to my training logs I have more PR runs at or near that temperature than at any other.

I think for this week I'll focus speed work more on my tempo run and at least one of my brick runs.  That should make my weekend long run easier to run faster even in this ridiculous heat.  

I just looked back over my logs and found that although my average pace for my long run is slower than where it was the few weeks preceding my April half marathon, it has steadily been increasing since that same time.  That is to say, since the week after the race where I started clocking slower times, I've been gradually increasing speed since then.  

My Garmin died last night.  The screen was blank when I found it on the charger.  When I unplugged it and plugged it back in the screen lit up and began charging.  Then I checked on it later and the screen was blank again.  I eventually had to do a hard reset to get it to come back on.  I then was able to let it charge.  I thought everything was fine this morning went it seemed to be operating normally.  I got exactly half way through my ride, when I noticed the screen was not on the stop watch screen, but had reverted back to the normal screen that displays the time.  I switched it back to the stopwatch display and my time was still there and mileage only the time had stopped.  I hit the start button and all seemed normal again.  

I rode for about 23.5 miles today.  When I got home I changed into my shoes and went for a run.  I saved the bike activity on the Garmin and started the watch again for the run.  Everything seemed fine.  I recorded a 3 mile run in about 23 minutes.  

When I went to upload the activity Garmin connect said no activities were found.  I then disconnected the watch and tried to view the activities directly from the watch.  Nothing.  I have no idea what happened but I'm a little frustrated.  I've had to reset my watch before when it froze, but I only lost activities already saved on the watch.  Why did the watch not record and save this mornings activities?

I reconnected to Garmin Connect and looked on the support section.  The website suggested that I run a software update and that updating my software would fix most problems.  I ran the update.  I will use my Garmin again tomorrow to find out if it worked.  I think I will also download a running app for iPhone to take along with me as a backup just in case.    

In sum I'm trying to remember my distances. 

Bike: about 23.5 miles

Run: 3.01 miles in about 23 minutes. 

I took Ty in the jogging stroller this morning on the Creek turnpike trail for the first time.  It was a little windy, which made the hills even more challenging pushing the stroller.  I enjoyed it though.  The passersby and other runners and cyclists seem to smile and wave at me a lot more when I'm pushing a baby in a jogger as opposed to running solo.

My time today: 58:52

Pace: 8:23

My ball of my left foot was just a little bit touchy for a short time a little over half way through.  The tendon that runs along the arch of my right foot felt a little tight during mile 6. 

Tempo Run

Time: 47:12

Pace: 7:51

Brick ride this morning.  Time: 1:05:23  Distance: 17.09 miles

Brick Run: 3.03 miles in 23:05 for pace of 7:37. 

HOT!  84 temp with heat index of 94 by the time I finished my run.  The meteorologist with the national weather service on the radio this morning said that we will have heat indexes up around 103 for the foreseeable future.  It sure makes training fun! 

I completed 40 miles this week.  Woo Hoo!  I've been building my base up towards that magical 60 miles per week, so talked about among the Fast Running Blog community, in order to attain the coveted BQ.  

I've been trying to remind myself that I don't need to maintain super high speeds on the days that I'm just building mileage.  I don't want to burn out as I begin my official 16 week marathon training plan in two weeks.  I'm curious if I need to taper just a bit before starting the plan since I've been building for several weeks in addition to logging about two hours per week on the bike and two hours per week in the pool.  

Time: 1:07:57

Pace: 8:29