Doug's Running Thingy

Garmin threw in another little hiccough this morning right in the same spot on the trails.  Skipped about 4 tenths of a mile - wonder if there might be an underground meth lab or new gravitational black hole - its done this the past 2 runs, but never before.  Eased the distance of my Monday morning run up a bit on the way to making it an 8-miler over the next few weeks... my version of a "long run".  Super humid after rains yesterday afternoon.  Took it easy at about 8:20 pace for entire run.

Sat around after work watching the heat index drop from 103 to 100, but it never went below 100, so I sucked it up and headed on out for a really slow 5 miler.  Ran the Lake Jackson loop from forest meadows trail head - nice run... when its nice outside - bleh.

Easy 1.5 miles to the start of north loop, and then some light stretching before launching into the 0.8 mi loop in an attempt to go sub 5 minutes for first time this year.  I borrowed Travis' Kinvaras because I need some new trail shoes and the Perigrines are supposed to wear identically as the Kinvaras.  I really liked the feel and the weight, and they carried me through the twisty north loop in 4:42 - not bad.  Finished up the rest of the ravine trail back to the jeep real easy.  Think I'll go shopping now.

Figure 8 plus north loop again today, and again Garmin got squirrelly from 3 to 3.5 miles - lost about a quarter mile - I guess I will just take that into account from here on when I run this route in the morning.  It did not mess up yestereve when I ran that same stretch - odd.  Was a fairly comfortable 8 min pace run with some harder efforts on the uphills - felt pretty strong.  Still trying to decide if I want to race the 8K trail run this weekend or just shoot pics of Travis and the team doing the 5K and 3K.  

Oh well, I guess a strong mile one week doesn't translate to a strong 8K the following week.  This 8K trail race has some pretty good hills and more big gravel than I recalled from last year.  Started out right on my desired 6:55 pace, but I worked the hilly 2nd mile too hard and still only mustered a 7:23.  Cruised the 3rd mile in recovery mode at 7:18 and pretty much fell into survival mode for the last two (7:24, 7:10 pace) - not a good day, but the 36 flat overall time is a minute faster than I ran it last year, so thats something.

Travis raced the 5K and took 5th overall in 17:40ish (the 8K and 5K were run concurrent, so I didn't see his finish and he wasn't sure exact time).  He is still in motivation doldrums and did not have a good run.  He now has two weeks to snap out of it before the first official XC race.