High-Octane

 Evening Run - Decided to go out for 2 fast(er) miles. My target was 2 miles @ 7:00 Pace. I did it but it was hard. It's going to take a while to get back! It was very hot too.

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Back home and running my normal route again. I took yesterday off and then tried to run a little harder today. My legs are feeling pretty good but my cardio is really struggling. I'm trying to keep hydrated but it's just really hot and humid. Today it was 80 degrees and 96% humidity.

Today I finally kept a pace that can be called a "run" at a 8:10 avg. pace. Now to just add 20 more and a little more speed and all will be good!

Slow Run this morning. 79 degrees and 80% humidity at the start...it was hot. I kept it really slow (9:30 pace) which seems harder than a 8:30 pace. There's something about that really slow pace that just makes my legs feel like lead weights. Anyway, this was the longest run in quit a while.

I thought today was going to be a better day of running Through the first 4 miles I though I was feeling good but at mile 5 I started to fade and went down hill from there. I hope I'm not wasting my time with these workouts. I don't feel like I'm making any progress.

 On the bright side, I went to the doctor today and he said my collarbone was healing very well. He was very impressed with the range of motion I have in my arm and shoulder. He also said the bone was knitting together nicely. He went on to say that it was okay for me to start running but I need to be careful. He also said I could ride my bike but I told him that I only had a road bike and had to lean over and put quite a bit of pressure on my arms and shoulders to ride. He then said maybe I should wait a while to ride and that I should just run. That was fine with me!  He wants to see me again in a month before he releases me completely. He said for the next month I shouldn't lift anything with my arm but continue to move and stretch it. After he said this I promptly reached over and picked up my backpack with my left (hurt) arm/shoulder and he said "that's what I don't want you doing"....oops!

Here is my run today and below that is the latest x-ray for your enjoyment. :-)

 Romans 5:3-5

Added 3 miles in the evening.

I decided to run a little shorter today but also faster so I ran 3 miles (1.5 miles out & back). This is the time in running when I wonder why I'm doing this. I'm a little discouraged with what seems to be ridiculous effort for poor results. I'm hoping to get over this feeling soon. I'm sure I will. 

I spent a few minutes researching the effect of temperature, humidity and dew point yesterday. I've been curious about the effects of these three thing but never really realized how they worked together to make it so unpleasant to run sometimes. I found this article that describes the effects fairly simply and accurately. 

http://througharunninglens.blogspot.com/2012/07/dew-point-and-runners-what-is-it-and.html 

I feel like I now understand why our central Texas weather is so uncomfortable to run in at times. I am going to start tracking Dew Point so I might hopefully understand why some training runs seem so much harder than others. I might be able to adjust my training based on the findings.

A good example of the Dew Point effects was today's run. The Dew Point just happened to be 72. I suspect this is going to be a common reading for most of my morning runs. As you can see from the chart below (taken from the above article) you can "expect pace to suffer greatly".  Not that this information changes anything but at least it can give me a little peace of mind that I've just not lost everything and should throw in the towel! 

 Update:

I went and looked at the Temperature, Humidity and Dew point of several locations across the country to compare to this mornings run. Here they are:

Billing 56 degrees, 66% Humidity, Dew Point 45

Ammon 57 degrees, 77% Humidity, Dew Point 50

Lakewood 51 degrees, 94% Humidity, Dew Point 50

Cypress 82 degrees, 88% humidity, Dew Point 78 (Sorry Flat!)

Tacoma 55 degrees, 89% Humidity, Dew Point 52

Preston 60 degrees, 64% Humidity, Dew Point 48

Ohio 68 degrees, 64% humidity, Dew Point 55

OK City 72 degrees 88% humidity, Dew Point 68 (but raining and flash flood conditions) 

Proverbs 18:15 

An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.

Oh, I forgot to talk about my run. I ran my small loop + a little to complete 7 miles. Each mile I would speed up to a 5:30 pace (about .10 mile) twice during the mile then slow back down and catch my breath and cool down. Overall average Pace was 8:23.