The Long Run

3.3, 31:33, 9:33 avg

Solo out and back run from my house to just past the water fountain and then back.  Just a little run to keep me going, still trying to shake the tired legs.  Getting in some extra walking to make up for part of the low mileage.

Push-ups: 60

4.38 mi, 39:59, 9:07

Solo run in the neighborhood.  Still feeling with tired legs.  Tried to change things up a little bit but not sure if it helped right away.  Ran just two faster quarters, not really at 400m training pace (which might be about 5:40 pace for me), but did about 5k pace, to remind myself I could run faster and to try and wake up some muscles and things I wasn't using for easy runs.

7.13 mi, 1:04:39, 9:04

Since I was close to getting 100 miles for the month, I decided to break with my very low mileage days and run 7 miles despite tired legs.  One good thing I discovered was that the "tired legs" feeling does go away after about 4 miles, so maybe it's just really stiff and tight legs making them feel extra hard to move.

Ran from my house, out to the Y, taking the short route.  Stopped there for the water fountain and took a gel before turning back.  Ran into Jenny while running past the golf course on my way home.  Last mile was at 7:40 (much better than first mile which was at 11:25 pace).

I also tried my new SanDisk mp3 player with bluetooth which worked fine but has horrible sound quality (at least when listening over bluetooth).  I've got a cheaper one by AGPTEK with much better sound but it won't play AAC files when using bluetooth headhphones (AAC aka mp4 or m4a - I had to rename all the mp4 files to .m4a to get them to work on the SanDisk player).  I might have to keep a set of files converted from mp4 to mp3 so I can use the cheaper but better sounding player.

Finally, while leaving for work, backing out of my garage I felt a bump, like running over something.  So, I stopped, pulled back into the garage and opened my door to get out.  Next to my door, inside the garage was about a 4 foot long alligator. He/she just walked away.  Was not expecting an alligator in my garage.  Must have gotten lost while going from one pond to another.

5.41 mi, 52:16, 9:40 avg

Ran with Joe in the neighborhood.  I was going to not run but Joe was running and one someone asks you to run it's like free motivation, or maybe like almost no motivation required, you just have to show up and run because someone asked you.  You don't have to convince yourself to get moving and struggle with where and how far to run, you just go.

So, it was a pretty good run, usual t-shaped route, nothing extra added on.  Slower first mile, with the rest all in the 9:00's.

10.04 mi, 1:26:21, 8:36 avg

Nice morning, run starting in Starkey Park with Joe, Daisy, Renee and a few others.  Daisy turned back at 3.5 and I went out to 5 miles before turning back.  Renee went to 5.5 and Joe out to 6.5.  Water stops were all empty , but Renee shared some of her water so I could wash down my gel.  Today's run felt much better than in a long time (maybe since the 12 mile run I did a couple weeks before that marathon) - some hope that my running can turn around.

After the run, met up with Jessica, her two girls and her parents to see the movie Coco, then watched some of Jacob's soccer game.  Unfortunately he took a pretty bad hit to the head (ball hit head, head hit ground), kind of dazed but able to get up on his own at least.

Did some more walking after lunch (about 3-4 miles) on the Pinellas trail.