Kerry's Running Blog

I woke up just after five and realized that I wasn't going to get back to sleep before my alarm went off at 5:15, so I quickly got dressed and headed out for a run. It was dark enough that I couldn't really see how smoky it was, but there was a slight smell. After a couple of miles I noticed that my throat was a little sore, but that might have been due to the fact that I was a little dehydrated. I was going to explore some extensions to my daily route, but I forgot to put on the Garmin before I left. It was just as well, as I had to get back a little early so that I could drop my daughter off at the church for the start of girl's camp.

Kohler's loop. Warm and smoky, with not even a hint of breeze. Left the house around 5:25 which is now kind of dark. I seriously thought about sleeping in this morning as I figured the extra rest might do me more good than the exercise, but my body is so used to that time schedule that I knew that I'd at least have to get up and go to the bathroom and that I was unlikely to get back to sleep anytime soon. I guess that's why it's best not to develop bad habits, as they can be so tough to break. I'll try to get a tempo run in tomorrow.

Tempo run this morning on Kohler's loop. I got to bed a little earlier last night and it seemed to make a difference. It's kind of amazing that I almost always wake up at 5:14, about one minute before my alarm is set to go off. I just wonder what part of my unconscious brain has the task of monitoring my internal clock and waking me up at exactly the right time. I know that chemical processes in my body happen at precise intervals, but what is that tracks a particular process and correlates that to external, mechanical clocks. I'm also amazed that I can generally think of a time before going to bed and that most of the time I'll wake up just at the time I was thinking about.

I usually think about things like that on my morning runs. I guess that running the same course most days (and not paying too much attention to the scenery) gives me more of a chance to think. Sometimes I'm hardly aware of the fact that I'm even running.

Warmed up this morning for 2.5 miles and then pushed the pace up past my lactate threshold and held it there for another 4.0 (average pace 7:23). Cooled down for little more than half a mile. Overall average was 8:02.

Kohler's loop including a run around the pond. I'm looking at ways to increase my daily run from seven miles to eight. I think if I start out heading south towards the elementary school and then down to the canal and out to 48th that I'd have it. I didn't run yesterday because even though I went to bed about a half an hour earlier, I woke up with abdominal cramps and generally feeling sickly. The cramps bothered me off and on throughout the day, but were gone this morning. I'm not quite sure what brought that on, perhaps some little bug (that might also have been the reason I was feeling so tired earlier in the week). Today's run went well, but it was a little bit more of an effort than I expected.

I'm going to try to get 10 to 12 in tomorrow morning before I run with the family in the Cedar Hills race. My youngest daughter Amelia is quite excited about it as it's her first race. She hasn't trained very much, so I'm a little bit afraid that she'll be discouraged to find that she's at the back of the pack. I'm hoping that it will be more of motivator to work harder for the next one. 

Extend Kohler's loop and one mile fun run with my wife and daughters afterwards. I previously wrote up a long description of the day, but apparently it timed out on me and I lost it all. Oh, well.