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This morning Olivia and I did something that we rarely get to do…..we did our training run together. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say that we did them at the same time, in the same general location. Both of our schedules called for 60-minute runs, so we each decided to do an out and back route on Front Beach Road along the ocean. This meant that we got to start together and finish together. Since my parents are with us on vacation they were able to watch the kids while we were running.
Now that we are completely clear of the tropical storm, the climate has returned to normal for this time of the year. The temps were around 80 when we started with very high humidity and a steady breeze throughout. The breeze felt pretty good since there is absolutely no shade, but it does make it harder to find a rhythm and maintain good running form.
As has been the case every day this week, my “easy paced” effort turned into somewhat of a progression run with every mile, except for one, faster than the previous. Here’s a rundown of my splits:
I also progressively felt better throughout the run which is always encouraging. I knew that my pace was progressively increasing, so I decided to make the outward half 31 minutes before turning around, thinking that it was more likely to take me 29 minutes to get back than the full 30. With about 5 minutes to go I passed Olivia heading back toward the condo, and I knew that I was still going to have time left when I finished the route. It actually only took me 28 minutes to get back after taking 31 minutes on the way out.
To make up this extra time, I turned around and ran back to Olivia and then we walked together back to the condo. She commented about how hot it had been, but was encouraged that her shins had not bothered her after having some pain earlier this week. All-in-all we both had successful runs this morning.
In total I finished 7.29 miles with an average pace of 8:15 per mile.
Beast Mode….ON!
I need to find out what stride outs are!
Stride Outs are generally 100m repeats used as a final warmup before a full track or interval workout. The idea is to accelerate for the first 80m up to 85 or 90% effort, and then taper your speed to the finish. We usually do 6 sets of these before every track workout. I know that many times I may not feel great during my regular warmup, but then once we get through strides everything feels ready to go.
Also, my coach has me doing these at the END of at least two of my easy-paced runs each week, so that I get some extra speed work in on tired legs. Since my goal in running a marathon will be to maintain my pace even when my legs are toast, adding these to the end of normal training runs helps to simulate that type of effort.
Now that we are mostly clear from Tropical Storm Debby, this morning’s run was WAY different than yesterday. While it was still windy (though not as bad), about all I got today was full sun, full heat, and lots of humidity. In other words, about what you’d expect from a morning run on the gulf in late June.
My schedule today called for 45-minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. Other than sweating like a dog, I again felt pretty good throughout the run, and my splits got a bit faster with every mile (9:16, 8:27, 8:20, 8:12, 7:55).
I did my stride outs across from the condo in what used to be the parking lot of the old Miracle Strip Amusement Park. I went there a bunch as a kid, but there is absolutely nothing there now. The pace for my strides was right at 6:00min pace. In total I finished 5.74-miles with an 8:14 average pace per mile.
Beast Mode…ON
This morning I checked another item off of my running bucket list (not really)…..Running in a Tropical Storm. With tropical storm Debby bearing down on the gulf coast, I took off along Front Beach Road for my scheduled 70 minute run at easy pace. Nathan….would this also be considered crazy?
I’ll have to say this was one of the strangest runs I’ve ever experienced as far as it relates to conditions. For most of the 70 minutes I faced constant strong winds with gusts of 40+ MPH. Sometimes it felt like I was being shoved forward, sometimes it felt like I was running in place, and other times my feet were landing way left or right of where I took off. When the run was finished I was covered by a nice layer of sand from all of the wind. The weather would also go from cloudy with no rain, to periods of pelting rain, to periods of full sun.
As for the run itself, I felt pretty good throughout, though I did get fatigued from constantly fighting the wind. I tried to maintain a consistent effort even though the conditions made my mile splits bounce all over the place. In total I finished just over 8.5-miles in the 70 minutes at a pace just under 8:15 per mile.
Now that it is later in the day, Debby has taken an unexpected turn to the east, which left us with clear skies and a beautiful sunset on the beach. Olivia and I along with Kate and Sara took the opportunity to enjoy a very nice walk together. While this is good news for us, it will be a tough couple of days for those in Central Florida.
Beast Mode…ON!
How bad do I want this? Bad enough to start my scheduled 15+ mile run at 3am this morning so I could get it in before our family left for vacation at 7am.
How good of a friend is Nathan? Such a good friend that he got up and ran it with me!
How CRAZY are we? INSANE!!
I honestly didn’t know when I was going to get my run in this weekend, but I knew one way or another it was going to get done. Yesterday Nathan texted me about running this morning with our running group. I said that we would be on our way to the beach while the group was running, and then half-jokingly threw out there that we could start at 3am! While I expected a “Thanks but no thanks,” he actually expressed some interest, and after a few more texts we had agreed to meet at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center at 3am.
Because of packing, I was not able to get to bed last night until 11:30pm, so this was little more than a nap. Even though I was very tired when we started, it turned out to be a very good time to run since the temps were fairly mild (around 60 degrees).
With night-time reflective gear and head lamps equipped, we took off on a route that included Edwin Warner Park, the Harpeth River Greenway, and a very large section of the Bellevue community where we live.
After a very, very chill first mile, we settled into a nice rhythm with a pace in the mid to low 8:00s the remainder of the run. Even with the lack of sleep I felt very good throughout, and we just kept clicking off mile after mile.
A few highlights from the run…
About 3/4 of the way through the 5th mile I noticed a small object on the side of the road. I couldn’t really tell what it was, but assumed it was a piece of trash. As I stepped beside it I heard a sudden noise and then looked up to see a dove a few inches in front of my face flapping wildly. I jumped and screamed like a little girl, even causing Nathan to jump. This scared me enough that my heart went racing, and it took a couple of minutes to settle down.
A few minutes later we saw a woman standing in her front yard with a man laying down in the grass beside her feet. Even before we said anything, we assumed that one or both of them was very inebriated. Nathan made a comment that their reason for being outside at 3:45am was about 180 degrees different than ours. They were outside laying in the grass because they were plastered, and we were outside because we were in the middle of a 15+ mile run. Then he pointed out that we might be similar in level of craziness.
Near the end of the run, Nathan pointed out that we had set another “PR” this morning. He said the before today the earliest we had ever run together was 4am. He also said that our temperature “PR” for training was 9 degrees, which was two winters ago. Our previous 4am run was the day before the 2010 Marine Corp Marathon. Neither of us were participating, but our friend Paxton was going with some other members of our running group and needed a ride to the airport. In order to get our run in before I needed to pick him up we got up to run the Percy Warner 11.2-mile loop in the dark at 4am. That was a pretty interesting experience. The trees on that route are so dense that very little light can get through from the night sky, and taking on those massive hills in the dark was a much different perspective than running in the daylight.
As we finished up the run this morning in Edwin Warner Park, the sun was just beginning to come up over the trees. Nathan later posted this on Facebook…
There’s just something about watching the sun rise across the tree tops of Edwin Warner Park that makes you appreciate life and know undeniably that there is a creator. Praise God!
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. Even though it was early, it turned out to be a very enjoyable run with a really good friend. In total we completed 15.25 miles with an average pace of 8:29 per mile.
Beast Mode…ON!
With John (our coach) out of town for the next two weeks at the Olympic Track & Field trials, and not receiving an official workout from Jim Spivey, Dan suggested the group do 400m intervals at track tonight. However, our normal 400m workout is 3 sets of 3 x 400m repeats, but tonight we did 4 sets of 3 x 400m repeats! This is almost 4.5-miles of intervals, which is pretty long for our group. On top of this it was still 95º at 6pm, so needless to say it was fairly tough.
Here’s a rundown of the night…
- 2-Mile Warmup
- 6 x 100m Stride Outs
- 4 Sets of 3 x 400m vf (200m recovery / 400m recovery)
- 1/2-Mile Cool Down
For a normal 400m workout we will do a mixture of “fresh” and “good” paced repeats within each set. However, with the very high temps tonight, and the longer workout, Dan advised us to do each one at “very fresh” pace which should be 3 to 5 seconds slower than “fresh” per interval. Recently my “fresh” paced 400m splits have been around 82 to 84 seconds, so tonight I was shooting for something between 86 and 88.
As has been the case for the past few weeks, I basically ran tonight’s workout by myself. While my legs felt pretty good throughout, I did have some difficulty dealing with the heat and this led to a little less consistency between repeats than I would have liked. This was especially true during the first one and last one. Here is a rundown on my splits per set:
- Set 1 (86, 88, 84)
- Set 2 (88, 88, 86)
- Set 3 (86, 88, 89)
- Set 4 (88, 89, 90)
By the last set I could feel the heat pulsing in my face, but tried to stay as consistent as I could until the end. I lost a couple of seconds during the final two repeats, but overall I’m pretty happy with the workout and how I felt. Just like last week I drank 64 ounces of fluid during the evening + a little bit more from the water fountain at the track, because it was HOT! Final total with warmup and cool down was 8-miles completed at 7:35 average pace per mile.
My daughter Kate came with me to the track tonight, so we got to enjoy another impromptu daddy-daughter date night after the workout. We had dinner at Pei Wei followed by FroYo at Sweet CeCe’s. Great night!
Beast Mode….ON!
This post’s title is one of my favorite Tony Horton quotes from P90X, and has very little to do with our run this morning except that we did see a Tin Man hanging from a tree (more on this in a bit), and we did talk about Tony Horton quotes (though not this one).
Today’s schedule called for 60 minutes at easy pace, so Nathan and I decided to run the reverse of a route we used for a 60 minute run a couple of weeks ago. We started off very, very conservative with an opening mile of 9:29. From this point forward every mile got progressively faster. This wasn’t planned, but just happened that way. You can see our splits below…
I was actually surprised at how good I felt, especially after the first 3 miles. At no time did the pace feel fast or forced. It just felt comfortable throughout. My shin continues to improve, and only felt like a slight twinge this morning. We completed the route in 60:57, which is almost 6-minutes faster than two weeks ago (though that was a Hattori run, and this was not). Our final total was 7.44-miles completed at 8:12 average pace per mile.
As for the “Tin Man,” during our second mile I looked over and noticed about a 3-foot tall tin man hanging from someone’s tree that was made entirely out of old cans. I’m guessing that it was a bird feeder, but looked kinda strange.
Anyway, it was another good run with Nathan in the books!
Beast Mode…ON!
Even though my right shin has been doing better than last week, I’ve been trying to be as cautious as possible. To that end, Nathan and I did today’s scheduled 40-minute, easy paced, run on the grass surface at the Steeplechase course in Percy Warner Park.
This course is a great surface for running and is the site of the annual Iroquois Steeplechase equestrian race, which is one of the oldest and most prestigious steeplechases in the country. The ground is very soft and consistent, with no rocks, roots, or holes. The only downside is that the grass is EXTREMELY thick, which forces you to work a bit harder than on the road.
Overall the run felt great, though we did have to deal with very humid conditions and soggy turf (from the dew). By the end of the run my shoes and socks were completely soaked through, but my Dry Max socks again kept me from getting any blisters. In total we ran just under 4.5-miles during our 40 minutes, with a pace right around 9:00 average per mile. At the end we did 6 x 100m stride outs on the grass, which felt a little strange in high grass with wet shoes. Our final total with strides was 4.81-miles completed at a 8:51 average pace per mile.
Beast Mode…ON!