Doug's Running Thingy

Didn't plan on running today after racing yesterday, but Lisa wanted to walk and my legs felt fine, so I ran about 3 and then finished up walking a half mile with her.  A bit lower humidity this evening, but still over 90 degrees when we headed out at 7pm. 

Evening run today following the XC parents' meeting - good turnout.  Coach's message boiled down to getting 8 hrs of sleep every night, eating a variety of healthy foods, sitting in ice water, and drinking chocolate milk - pretty straight-forward.  It was easing toward darkness after the meeting, so I ran from the school, through 3 miles of trails and then a couple miles on back roads to Newk's to meet Lisa and Trav as they finished dinner.  Surprisingly good run in my new Saucony Peregrines - apparently the trail equivalent to the Kinvara - nice lightweight, low heel shoe.

Being the lightweight that I am, I don't usually do two runs within 12 hours of each other, but I wanted to take advantage of the cooler temps this morning, so I hit the trails at sun up. Ran the figure 8 starting with the low side to see if the Garmin black hole would be vanquished by running that section later in the run when the sun was fully up (yes, I know that the sun should have nothing to do with satellite reception, but there you have it) - seemed to work - very strange.  Five miles at overall average 8:03 with each mile faster than the last, finishing with a 7:42.

Nothing yesterday due to too many hours working and not enough hours sleeping.  Got in 5-6 hrs sleep last night, so jumped out to the trails this morning for my weekly north loop time trial.  Once again sneaked under 5 minutes for the 0.8 mi loop (4:54).  Warm up and cool down mileage was between 8:30-8:45 pace.  Probably do 2-3 miles this evening if wifey wants to walk the trails after work... as long as I don't need to pull another all nighter here at the office.

Decided to make tomorrow the 5th Saturday in a row that I do a local race - 5K mix of road and trail, so I just ran a little 3-mile shakeout run this morning.  First mile easy (8:30), then pressed a little bit in the middle mile (7:17), and cruised on back to the house at 7:41 for the last mile.  I've never run tomorrow's course before, but it shapes up very similar to the one on which I ran 19:54 three weeks ago, so I'm thinking 19:49 is a good goal.

Tropical storm to our west sucked most of the heat and humidity away for the morning, so it was 69 and really nice for the race.  Not many folks showed up other than several JV-type XC boys (this was a fundraiser for a local high school's sports program) and only a handful decent locals - total of 110 runners.  There was more single track trail than I thought, and a finishing hill that was pretty nasty, so just breaking 20 minutes was perfectly fine for today.  Finished 9th overall and 1st old guy - of course, the one race ever that I snag 1st master, I had to leave right away before the awards ceremony - ah well. Its been a pretty fun five weekends of racing - might come to an end next week as we travel to Mobile to watch the boys first XC meet... hmmmm maybe there's an open division  :)