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Today Nathan and I started our run from the small gravel parking lot next to the Steeplechase in Percy Warner Park. We used to start here a LOT, but it has been quite a while since it has come up in our rotation. I picked this location for two reasons: (1) It has been very warm and sunny this week (even early in the morning) and the routes out of this lot are pretty shaded. (2) The route we took today is fairly hilly, and I just felt like running some hills for today’s easy run.

After starting across from the Steeplechase we took the old abandoned road near the 5-mile marker on the Main Drive in Percy Warner over onto the Main Drive in Edwin Warner. The abandoned road is an interesting place to run. It is kinda like a road/trail hybrid with lots of overgrowth and sections missing that were washed away by the 2010 flood. Also, while we run in Edwin Warner a LOT, we don’t typically run on the Main Drive there, so it was a nice change of pace. Near the end of the run we took the Harpeth River Greenway to the Edwin Warner Nature Center, and then hopped on the Candy-Cane connector trail back into Percy Warner before heading to the cars.

The schedule called for 75-minutes easy, and we kept the pace very, very chill throughout. I’m guessing the pace would have been quite a bit faster on a flat surface, but our route had over 1,400 ft of cumulative elevation gain in just over 8-miles, and included several different surfaces as mentioned above.

Overall I felt fantastic this morning, especially on the climbs. I actually felt better on the climbs today than I did on the one, steep downhill during miles 3 and 4. The heat and humidity were tough, but this didn’t seem to affect my energy level too much.

In total we finished just over 8.25-miles with an average pace of 9:22 per mile. For me that makes 28.2-miles since Monday, and I’m pretty sure that Nathan is well over 29. Even with my poor showing on Monday, this is still turning out to be a pretty good running week.

Beast Mode…ON!

In many cases there is benefit to looking to the past when trying to improve for the future, but today my focus was on staying in the present, and trying to put yesterday’s poor workout completely behind me.

As has become the norm for a Tuesday, today’s scheduled called for 50 minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. John had told me yesterday to feel free to modify the plan as necessary if my legs felt trashed this morning, so I just decided to take it as I went. The heat and humidity are still really nasty in Nashville right now. Even at 6am it was almost 80º with humidity at 90%.

Nathan and I met at the main gates of Percy Warner Park, and did a route through the streets of Belle Meade. Overall I felt really good today, and not significantly different than any other Tuesday morning run after a hard Monday workout. Our first two miles were over 9:00min pace, and then we settled into a nice 8:40ish pace for the remainder of the 50 minutes.

When we got back to the main gates we did our 6 x 100m stride outs back and forth on the main drive. I approached these pretty tentatively after yesterday’s troubles, but ended up feeling fantastic running fast. I couldn’t quite keep up with Nathan, but still finished with a 5:30 average pace for the strides.

In total we completed just over 6.3-miles with an average pace of 8:43 per miles. Good confidence boost after feeling dead yesterday.

Beast Mode…ON!

I’ve been wondering when this day would come, and today it happened. John broke me!

In all seriousness, I’ve been feeling great throughout this summer, and all-the-while John has slowly been increasing the intensity of the workouts. It seemed inevitable that at some point things would hit a bit of a wall. Well, last night he sent me the following workout for today:

• 30-minutes easy warmup
• 4 x 6-minutes at 6:20 to 6:30 pace with 1-minute active recoveries in-between
• 5-minutes easy recovery
• 3 x 6-minutes at 6:20 to 6:30 pace with 1-minute active recoveries in-between
• 30-minutes easy cool down

I happened to be sitting next to Nathan when this came in, and he looked at me like I had to be joking when I read it off to him. I knew this workout would be pushing the limits of my capabilities, but kept telling myself “You’ve Got This!”

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center around 5:30am this morning, and ran our 30-minute warmup in the park and on the Harpeth River Greenway. The humidity was still very high like it was on Saturday, but this morning there were no clouds to provide any relief from the sun. During the warmup I felt pretty good, and had no indication that anything was different than previous weeks.

For the intervals we ran out-and-back on the Harpeth River Greenway, and there was good news and bad news. The good news is that I successfully hit the target range during the first 6-minute repeat, with a 6:29 average pace. The bad news is that I had a really hard time running that fast during the first repeat, and it was the last time I would finish an interval in the target range (by a wide margin).

Pretty early on during the second repeat the wheels completely fell off the bus, and I had a really hard time keeping up with Nathan (who looked very strong). I finished the second repeat with a 6:46 average pace, and it just kept going downhill from there. By number three I couldn’t keep the pace below 7min pace and finished with a 7:11 average. For number four it dropped even further to a 7:27 average.

It felt like an out-of-body experience compared to the way things have been going lately. I had absolutely nothing in the tank, and it was demoralizing to know that I still had so much left to go. I wanted to run fast, but just couldn’t get my body to go. I resigned myself to the fact that my “tempo” intervals were not going to be very tempo today, and ran the rest by feel.

Nathan and I met back up for the 5-minute recovery, and then kept trudging on for the second set of intervals. For number five my pace dropped to an 8:02 average pace. For number six it dropped to 8:37. For the last one it actually improved a bit to 8:15. I don’t think he hit the target on all of them, but overall Nathan fared much better than I did throughout. I told him later that I thought he was running as strong as I’ve ever seen him run.

During the 30-minute cool down, I slowly started feeling better, but still desperately wanted the run to be over. Nathan jokingly said that I would now have to admit that I’m at least partly human and not all machine. I definitely felt all human today, and every bit of my almost 38-years. I’m trying not to be discouraged, but today was humbling after feeling so good this summer.

However, if I look at it practically, my good days have FAR outweighed my bad days this summer, which is a big change from last year. Also, I just ran 16-miles on Saturday in nasty humidity, and then turned around today and tried to run again in nasty humidity for almost 2-hours with 40+ minutes of tempo intervals. It doesn’t take a genius to know why I didn’t have much gas in the tank.

In total I finished just over 13.5-miles with an average pace of 8:41 per mile. This was almost a mile less than what Nathan got, because of his much faster pace on the repeats. On a brighter note, one cool thing about this morning’s run was seeing at least eight deer running around in the field behind Ensworth High School while doing the intervals.

Well…tomorrow is a new day, and I’m intent on putting this run behind me and continuing to move forward!

Beast Mode….Flickering….Flickering….Flickering….ON!

Friday:

After completing last night’s track workout with a 106° heat index, I ended up felling pretty tired throughout the run this morning. Nathan, Josh, and I met at Bellevue Church of Christ for a 45-minute recovery run through the streets of Bellevue, and as usual for Friday I did this run in my Saucony Hattoris.

I trudged through the first 30-minutes with Josh and Nathan, but decided to fall back for the final 15 as they picked up the pace a bit. Once I caught up to them at the end we did 6 x 100m stride outs in the church parking lot. As has been the case lately, Nathan and Josh blew past me like I was sitting still. Even though I was tired today, I was pleased that my legs didn’t have much residual soreness from the track workout last night.

In total I completed just under 5.25-miles with the strides, at an average pace of 9:09 per mile.

Saturday:

This morning our group joined the Nashville Striders for their “Bongo to Bongo” training run. This is a 14-mile route that starts at Bongo Java in East Nashville, heads toward Bongo Java near Belmont University, and completes a loop in the Belmont area (that was previously part of the Country Music Marathon course) before heading back.

The run was scheduled to start at 6:30am, but since most of this route is exposed with no shade, Dan suggested that we start earlier at 6:00am. There were several from our group that got there early, and I ended up running most of the route with Dan and Mary. My schedule called for 16-miles easy today, so I just planned on running a couple extra at the end.

Fortunately we ended up with a good amount of cloud cover, so the sun was never an issue. However the humidity was over 90% throughout the run, which made things tough. For the first four miles of the run I just flat-out felt tired like I did on Friday. It seemed like Dan and Mary were dragging me along. We started off fairly conservative with a first mile of 9:35, but the pace quickly dropped down into the mid-to-low 8:00s through the next three miles.

As we were running uphill through Music Row during mile five I started thinking about just dropping back and letting them go on ahead. At the same time I remembered something that Saucony posted on their Facebook page this week. It said “Never make a decision on an uphill.”

With that in mind, I decided to wait on making the decision to drop back until we crested the hill. When we got to the top I started feeling a lot better, and then I kept feeling better throughout mile six, and fell into a great rhythm. Just before we reached the normal turnaround for the route, Dan asked if we minded doing an extra loop to add a little distance. Since I needed two additional miles anyway, this sounded a lot better than doing them at the end.

The loop he took us on was completely new to me, but I really enjoyed it. When we got back to Belmont Boulevard we ran into some other members of our group who had started later along with the rest of the runners from the Nashville Striders. For miles two through 13 our splits all fell within a range of 8:38 to 7:59 per mile, with the majority being in the mid to lower part of the range.

For miles 14 and 15, we intentionally slowed the pace a bit and ran back toward Bongo East with Amaya from our group. During mile 16 up Woodland Street I picked the pace back up a bit to see how things would feel on tired legs. Overall I still felt great, and I only needed about 1/2-mile to complete my scheduled 16 when I got back to Bongo East. In total I finished just over 16-miles with an average pace of 8:24 per mile.

For the week I completed 54 total miles, which is the third time out of the past six weeks that I’ve crossed the 50-mile mark. Also this week I passed 1,300 total miles for the year, which is 493-miles ahead of where I was at the same point last year.

Beast Mode….ON!

I can’t stop thinking about the senseless murders in Aurora, CO early Friday morning. So incredibly sad & beyond words or comprehension. Nothing to do but pray.

Two weeks ago at our weekly track workout with the Jim Spivey Running Club (JSRC), it was 102º at the start with full sun. Last week it was 72º with overcast skies and some rain. Tonight the roller-coaster continued with temps around 94º and a heat index of a whopping 106º with the nasty humidity.

Tonight it felt like running inside a bowl of very warm soup, and honestly the conditions were more difficult than when the temps were at 102º a couple of weeks ago. All of this led us only having 5-people at the track tonight and me taking a very conservative approach to the workout. Here’s a rundown…

• 2-mile warmup
• 6 x 100m stride outs
• 800m straights and curves (400m recovery)
• 4 x 250m gfgf (150m recovery / 400m recovery)
• 3 x 500m f (200m recovery / 400m recovery)
• 800m straights and curves
• ~.75-mile cool down.

I generally felt pretty good through the intervals tonight, though the humidity did start to get to me during the 500m repeats. It was also about this time that John started pulling people out of the workout due to the conditions. However, because of my fairly conservative pacing, I was able to finish the entire workout with my legs still feeling fairly good.

Sometimes when I overdo it during a workout, I feel so trashed at the end that my cool down is more like a shuffle. Well, I’m pleased that tonight this was not the way I felt. I only needed around .75-miles for the cool down to finish off 7-miles total for the night, but my legs felt fresh enough to run quite a bit farther.

It was nice again tonight to have Nick with us at the track, which gave me someone to run with for at least half the workout. We stayed together through the 250s, but he had a gear at the end that I just didn’t want to try tonight.

At the end I spent some time talking to John about the night, and also about my training in general. So far I’ve been really pleased with the schedule he has put together for me, and also with how my body has been responding. I’m really excited about my training, and already looking forwarding to racing season this fall.

Beast Mode…ON!

Today’s schedule called for 70 minutes at easy pace, so Nathan and I met at the Bellevue United Methodist Church parking lot and ran a route that included the streets of Bellevue, Edwin Warner Park, and the Harpeth River Greenway. The temps were a bit cooler today at 5:45am (around 75º), but the humidity was still pretty tough.

My legs were good throughout the run, but overall I felt tired. Because of this the pace stayed very chill from start to finish with mile-splits ranging from 9:33 at the beginning to 8:26 near the end. I’m glad to have more than 24-hours before my next scheduled run on Thursday night, because this intense humidity has sucked the energy right out of me.

Nathan and I always have good conversations on our runs, but today the topics jumped all over the board from The Far Side cartoons, to Biblical fiction, to Batmobiles, etc. The discussion about The Far Side reminded me of my all-time favorite from that brilliant series…

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this!

Back to our run….In total we finished just over 8-miles with an average pace of 8:51 per mile. That makes almost 26-miles finished for the week so far. Looking like I’ll land squarely in the mid 50s this week if I’m able to stay on schedule.

Beast Mode…ON!

P.S. Anybody else have a favorite The Far Side to share?

When I sent out the group text to organize this morning’s run, I suggested we start from the main gates at Percy Warner Park. Josh wrote back and asked “the one on Hwy 100?” I responded with “No, at the end of Belle Meade Boulevard. There can be only one ‘Main’ gate!” This led to him stating that the phrase “There can be only one” should only be used when referring to The Highlander, which led to continued discussion on the same topic this morning. I have not seen this movie in a LONG time, so I had to look it up on the web to have any idea what he was talking about.

And I digress….Today’s scheduled called for 50 minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100 stride outs at the end. Josh, Nathan, and I were joined by Paxton, who made an appearance after a hiatus from our weekday runs. We did indeed start from the Percy Warner main gates, and ran through the streets of Bellevue. Even though the humidity was nasty, it turned out to be a really good run.

I really expected my legs to be dead today after two consecutive tempo workouts, but in actuality they felt pretty good. We finished our first mile in 9:21, and then followed with splits of 8:40, 8:37, 8:25, 8:09, and were on pace for a sub 8min 6th mile when our 50-minutes expired.

At the end we did 6 x 100m stride outs by the main entrance. My average pace for these strides was 5:12, but both Nathan and Josh flew past me like I wasn’t moving. As a matter of fact, Nathan made me look like I was sitting still, and Josh made Nathan look like he was sitting still. He was absolutely flying. Oh well…in total we finished just over 6.25-miles with an average pace of 8:17 per mile.

Beast Mode…ON!

I don’t know anyone who has one, but did read a review of it back in the January 2012 issue of Runner’s World. You can access that article (and videos) by going here.

Clock Wise – Use a powerful, high-tech watch to run your best

Having just completed a long tempo run on Saturday, I wondered if John would delay my normal weekly tempo interval run from Monday until later in week. Well last night I got my answer…

• 30 minutes – easy pace
• 10 x 2-min at 6:20 to 6:30 pace
  1-min active recovery between each repeat
• 30 minutes – easy pace

Last week we did a series of 5-minute repeats at 6:50 pace, but today things were shorter and much faster. I was a little nervous about how my legs would feel after Saturday’s effort, but looked forward to running fast.

Obviously having a Garmin is critical for these types of workouts, however when I was getting ready to leave the house this morning to meet Nathan, I realized I had not charged my Garmin 405 after Saturday’s run. I turned it on to check the battery and it immediately gave me the “Battery Low” message. I ran upstairs quickly and grabbed my old 305 that was sitting on the charger, hoping it would get me through just for today.

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Park Nature Center, and as usual ran our 30 minute warmup through the park and on the Harpeth River Greenway. The temperatures were in the upper 70s, but unlike last week we were greeted with full sun. Just last week Nathan commented that if the humidity stayed really high, it would be especially nasty when the sun returned. Well, today was pretty nasty!

Even with that, my legs felt really, really good from the outset. We slowly increased our pace from 9:12 to 8:03 through the first 30 minutes before starting the intervals on the Harpeth River Greenway. Just before we reached the greenway, I looked down at my Garmin 305, and the screen was blank! The battery only lasted 28 minutes! Awesome.

Well, for the remainder of the workout I was dependent on Nathan to be my pacer and timekeeper, and he did a fantastic job. I was a little annoyed that I couldn’t track my heart rate, but was grateful to have Nathan taking care of everything else. For all but two of the intervals the biggest thing I had to fight was going too fast. My legs continued to feel great.

We ran all 10 intervals and recoveries on the greenway and onto the streets of Bellevue, completing five on the way out, and five on the way back. The fourth and fifth repeats were completed on a slight incline, which was a bit of an increased challenge over the other eight. However, this led to numbers six and seven feeling fairly slow on the way back down.

According to Nathan’s Garmin, all of the repeats were completed at a pace between 6:20 and 6:26, which was right in line with our target range. We closed out the morning with an additional 30 minutes through the park and on the greenway back to the Nature Center.

All-in-all, Nathan looked great today and I felt pretty fantastic considering the hard effort on Saturday and the nasty weather this morning. In total we finished just over 11.25-miles with an average pace of 8:10 per mile with warmup and cool down.

Beast Mode…ON!

My original schedule called for 14 to 16 miles at easy pace today, however that ended up getting modified a bit before this morning. Our group had a marathon pace workout planned in Percy Warner Park, and I asked John about joining them when I saw him at track on Thursday. He recommended that I not do their run, but said he would give me a modified workout before Saturday morning.

Last night John called and gave me a progression tempo workout divided into 3 x 30 minute segments. The first 30 minutes was to be done at easy pace. The second 30 minutes was to be done at 15 to 20 seconds slower than goal marathon pace (7:05). The final 30 minutes was to be done from goal marathon pace (7:05) up to 20 seconds faster than goal marathon pace.

He advised that I should not try to blast up to the target pace as soon as each 30 minute segment started, but instead progressively work toward the faster pace. He also said that ideally the run should be done without stopping, however if I needed to take a fluid break he wanted me to continue the previous segment for five minutes or so before increasing my pace.

I decided to run in the same location as our group so that I would intersect with them occasionally and be able to join them for breakfast at the end. I started around 5:45am from the Beech Grove picnic area in Percy Warner, and headed out of the park onto Chickering Road. My pace after about 10 minutes was around 8:30, but I slowly worked my way to a 7:57 average for the entire segment. While the temperatures were pretty low (71º), and I was feeling very good, the humidity was oppressive and I could tell it was going to be a problem (more on that later).

Picture below is of one of the stranger looking houses in Nashville, called “Small World,” located on Chickering Road (on a much sunnier day than today)…

About 25 minutes into the first segment I knew I needed to make a pit stop and grab some fluid, so I headed back into the park. After making a very brief stop back by the picnic area right at 30 minutes, I continued on for another five minutes at the same pace as John had instructed. It was during this final five minutes that I first ran into the group as they were doing their warmup.

I ran the five minutes up to the 8-mile marker on the main drive in the park, and then began my second segment headed back toward the 7-mile marker. Just before reaching the 7-mile marker I turned left and headed out of the park again onto Chickering Road, headed in the opposite direction from before, toward Christ Presbyterian Academy. After looping the school, I headed back toward the picnic area in the park.

Just like in the first segment I tried to slowly increase my pace throughout, but this time things didn’t go so well. I was moving steadily from 7:25 pace toward 7:15 pace when all of a sudden at the 20-minute mark I just started feeling rough and had to slow down. The humidity just felt like it was crushing my lungs, and my legs felt dead. I think my average for the segment at the 20-minute mark was around 7:17, but by the time I finished it had dropped to 7:27. I stopped briefly around 28 minutes to grab a quick drink, and then ran another five minutes back toward the 8-mile marker.

At this point I was thinking there was no way I was going to be able to hit the target range for the third segment, but decided to just do what I could based on how I felt. I again started this segment from the 8-mile marker headed back toward the 7-mile marker on the main drive. My average pace for the first few minutes was around 7:20, and then out of the blue I started feeling a LOT better.

I again turned left before the 7-mile marker and headed out of the park onto Chickering Road. By the time I reached Chickering my average segment pace had dropped to 7:10 or so. For the remainder of the segment I ran a couple of out-and-backs on Chickering and my average pace steadily dropped from 7:10 down to 7:03. I glanced at my watch a few times during the last 10 minutes of the segment, and my pace was consistently between 6:45 and 7:00, which was exactly what I was shooting for.

I finished the final segment on Chickering just as it started to rain, and then ran easy back to the picnic area as a cool down. In total I finished 14-miles with an average pace of 7:36 per mile. Overall I’m fairly happy with the workout. I ran the first and third segments pretty close to how I had planned, though the second segment was a bit of a mess. I guess “two out of three ain’t bad” …

In all seriousness, I’m happy the bad section was in the middle and not at the end. I’m also pleased with how good I felt during most of that last segment, and that I was able to bounce back after feeling so lousy.

Beast Mode…On!

In other news, once we got to breakfast at Bread & Co we learned that two members of our group had set Tennessee state records in the 1,500m this morning. Paul ran a 4:34, which was a new record by approximately 18 seconds in the 50 to 54 year-old division. Grady ran a 5:38, which is a new record by 17 seconds in the 65 to 69 year-old division. Grady joined us for breakfast and gave us a blow-by-blow account of each race, which was fascinating. Major kudos and congrats to both of them. They will both also compete tomorrow in the 800m, and are again hoping to break state records. Wow!

This morning’s schedule called for 45-minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. Josh, Nathan and I met at Bellevue Church of Christ parking lot, and did our 45-minute run through Bellevue, including a loop around the vacant Bellevue Center Mall. Just like last Friday, I did this run in my Saucony Hattoris since my right shin is continuing to feel just fine.

We kept the pace extremely chill throughout the run with nothing faster than a 9:19 mile. This felt great as a recovery run after last night’s track workout. The weather was actually almost a duplicate of the conditions at track, and it even started raining lightly near the end of our initial 45-minutes.

With about 10-minutes to go we turned onto a street called “Green Meadows,” and I started singing the “Green Acres” theme song replacing “Meadows” for “Acres.” For some reason this led Josh to start singing “The Final Countdown” by Europe from 1986. I feel confident this song came out well before Josh was born (he’s a young pup) and right after Nathan was born (I feel old), but this lead to Nathan jumping in and singing it as well and telling a story about one of his former bosses that had this song as their ring tone.

Anyway, back to the run, we finished up our 45-minutes with a couple of loops around the Bellevue church building, and then did our strides in the parking lot. I honestly think I was only at about 60m when they finished each stride, but neither of them did the track workout last night. Even though I felt like I was standing still next to them, I’m pleased with the run this morning and how my legs felt after the hard effort last night.

In total we completed just under 5.25-miles with the stride outs at an average pace of 9:20 per mile.

Beast Mode…ON!

I’m not completely sure, but I think this might be one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

At 5:30pm last Thursday night it was 102º when I started my “warmup” for track. Tonight at the same time it was 72º and sprinkling rain, and it felt AWESOME. It was still crazy humid, but the lower temperatures were none-the-less very welcome.

All of this led to the best I’ve felt at a track workout in quite some time. Here’s a rundown for the night…

• 2.75-Mile Warmup
• 6 x 100m Stride Outs

• 600m f (200m recovery)
• 400m f+ (200m recovery)
• 4 x 150m f (50m / 400m recovery)

• 800m f (300m recovery)
• 400m f+ (200m recovery)
• 800m Straights and Curves (400m recovery)
• 600m f

• 1-Mile Cool Down

It was good to run most of the warmup and cool down with Paxton since we haven’t run much together lately. Also, I’ve basically run the track workouts by myself for the past month and a half, but tonight we had a new guy join our group named Nick who ran most of the intervals with me. He was a 400m track runner in college, and is now training for a full Ironman this fall. It was obvious that he has some serious speed in his reserves, and a very enviable running form. It’s easy to forget how nice it is to have someone to run with a track.

I felt like I had my target pace dialed in tonight, and this resulted in consistent splits throughout the workout. For example my 400m (fresh+) was 1:21 in the first set and 1:20 in the second.

My 600m (fresh) was 2:06 in the first set and 2:06 in the second. My 800m (fresh) in the second set was 1:26 for each of the two laps (2:52).

In total with warmup and cool down I completed just under 8 total miles with an average pace of 7:59 per mile.

After the workout, Olivia, Kate, and Sara joined me and the rest of the group for dinner at the Dog of Nashville, which was a great time as always.

Beast Mode…ON!

My current Saucony Hattoris are just about at the end of their useful life, and I’m facing the dilemma or re-ordering the exact same thing again (which they will continue to offer) or trying the new Hattori LC (with laces) that was just released today…

Per Saucony, the laces were added to provided a more snug and secure fit than the velcro overlay from the original model. However, this has never been a problem for me with the original. The other change Saucony made was to re-enforce the material over the toe to reduce wear. This was by far my biggest complaint with the original, but is only addressed in the new LC version with the laces.

What to do? What to do? I think I’m leaning toward trying the LC, but probably won’t order until next week.

As Nathan and I were getting ready for our run this morning I noticed there were several sticker type things on the bottom of one shoe that I don’t think I’d ever seen before. Nathan took one look at them and said that they looked like Goat Head Stickers like he used to see in Lamesa, Texas where he grew up….

He then commented that he’d never seen any of these since moving to Tennessee. I’m guessing that I got them while running in Florida a couple of weeks ago, because these were the same shoes I wore that entire week.

After starting our run, the discussion turned from Goat Head Stickers to “Hooker” weeds that were apparently another despised botanical from his family’s farm in Texas. Since I had never heard of either of these, I found the discussion quite interesting. Anybody else have to deal with these things? I love Nathan’s farm tales!

Back to running…today’s schedule called for 60-minutes at easy pace, and we started from the Bellevue United Methodist church building and ran a 7+ mile route which included several neighborhood streets in Bellevue, the Harpeth River Greenway, and Edwin Warner Park.

I’m really enjoying the cooler temperatures this week, but the humidity for the past couple of days has been intense. Other than dealing with the thick air, I felt pretty good today. After an initial mile around 9:15, we then completed the additional 6+ miles around with an average pace in the mid 8:00s. In total we finished just under 7.5 miles with an average pace of 8:36 per mile.

Beast Mode….ON!

Hobie Call, Would-Be Sub-2:00 Marathoner (Runner’s World)

Today’s schedule called for 50-minutes at an easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs at the end. After our tough tempo effort yesterday, Nathan and I decided to get in a nice recovery run on a softer surface by utilizing both the Vaughn’s Gap Cross Country Course and the Steeplechase Course within Percy Warner Park.

This morning we were joined by our friend Josh who is training for the Murfreesboro “Middle” Half Marathon this fall. With another round of rain and storms last night, the grass on both of these courses was pretty wet, but the continued lower temperatures were very nice.

We kept everything very chill with regard to pace, starting out around 10:00 and dropping into the mid 8:00s by the end. Due to some construction on a couple of foot bridges at the cross country course, we decided to take a little detour on the Candy Cane Connector Trail over to the Steeplechase Course. The grass at the Steeplechase was fairly long, which left our shoes pretty soaked and heavy, but the surface felt very nice as it always does.

After heading back to the Candy Cane Connector, we finished things off back at the cross country course before starting our stride outs. For the strides we stayed in the grass on the course as I continually watched Nathan and Josh blow past me.

One unusual thing this morning is that we kept seeing rabbits along our route. By the end of the run I had counted seven that went scampering out of our way. Guess they were enjoying the cooler temps and the wet grass!

In total we completed around 5.75-miles this morning with the stride outs at a 9:05 average pace. It was the perfect recovery run for me, and a great way to start the morning with friends!

Beast Mode….ON!

Last night we finally got a good rain as storms passed through the area. This also cooled things off a bit, leaving the temperatures around 75º at 5:45am. However, even though the temps were down slightly, the humidity was nasty.

As for the workout, things got cranked up another notch today with over 100 minutes of running, including 40 minutes of tempo intervals in the middle. Here’s a rundown of the schedule…

• 30 minute warmup
• 5 x 5 minutes at 6:50 to 7:00 minute pace
  -3 minute active recovery between each repeat
• 30 minute cool down

Nathan and I met at the Edwin Warner Nature Center and completed our warmup along the Harpeth River Greenway and within Edwin Warner Park. I felt a little sore from my two falls on Saturday, but nothing compared to what I was expecting. Overall I felt pretty good throughout the warmup, though I was really sweating with the humidity.

For the tempo intervals and recoveries, we ran these continuously out-and-back on the flat part of the Harpeth River Greenway behind Ensworth High School. Even with the muggy conditions I felt really good throughout, and didn’t have much trouble hitting the target pace each time. I did comment to Nathan that the coming back always seemed harder than the going out, but we were pretty consistent in completing the first two intervals with .72 total miles each, and the last three with .73 total miles each within the five minutes.

After completing the intervals, we finished up with our 30-minute cool down, which actually turned into a 35-minute cool down. We ran all the way to the end of the Harpeth River Greenway to take a peek at the construction that has been going on for some time. I had thought they were just putting in an access road to the cell tower that is back there, but instead they have built a small parking lot and trailhead for the greenway. It looks pretty nice.

In total we ran for 1 hour 45 minutes and completed 12.6-miles with warmup and cool down at an average pace of 8:21 per mile. Our average pace for the tempo intervals was 6:55 per mile, which was right on target.

Beast Mode…ON!

It has become somewhat of a tradition with our group to do a Red, White, and Blue trail run on or around the 4th of July each year. These represent the colors of all the major trails in Percy and Edwin Warner Parks, so the run involves completing all three trails plus the Candy-Cane connector trail which links the two parks together. This is quite a challenging run with almost 12-miles of trails and over 3,000 ft. of cumulative elevation gain…

Since my schedule called for 14 to 16 miles today I got to the park a little early to complete just over a mile on the blue trail before the group arrived. For the group run we started out from the Edwin Warner Nature Center on the Candy-Cane connector trail. Since I was already warmed up, I ran out ahead of the rest of the group on the Candy-Cane and then onto the Red Trail in Percy Warner. My legs were feeling fantastic.

However, as has become the recent norm, about two miles into the group run I caught a jagged rock with my right foot and went down hard to the ground. Thankfully my hand-held water bottle took the brunt of the fall, only leaving me we a few scrapes on the knuckles of my right hand, and a bit of soreness in my right hip. After taking a second to clean myself off, some of the group had caught back up with me, and I continued on with them.

With no lasting ill effects from the fall, I continued to run the trails pretty hard and ended up well in front of the rest of the group again. Just before we transitioned from the Red to the White trail I heard someone from our group yell behind me, and ran back to find that Sue Anne had also taken a tumble going into a hard left turn. She had a pretty good scrape on her left knee, but was otherwise OK. We continued on to the White trail, and again I went out in front.

However, after about a 1/2 mile on the White trail I realized there was someone coming up right behind me. I briefly turned around and was surprised to see Aine from our group. While Aine is a very strong runner, this was the first time she had ever run trails. Usually first-timers are very timid on the downhills, or underestimate how difficult the climbs will be, but Aine was tearing it up throughout the run.

We took a brief break at the point where the White trail connects with the Red trail to re-group and make sure we had not left anyone behind. From there we ran the second half of the Red trail. Again I surged out to the front, but this time Aine and Sue Anne stayed with me. We came to a section of the Red trail which is almost like a shale cliff. Most runners walk up this section, and I do frequently as well. However, today I was determined that I was not going to walk any part of the trails, so I began to weave back and forth like a billy goat up this climb.

I guess Sue Anne took this as a personal challenge, and powered up the shale face with me. Once we got to the top she powered past me and took off like a bullet. I had to pick up my pace just to stay within 20 meters of her, and she stayed out in front for the remainder of the Red trail. We again re-grouped with everyone before jumping back on the Candy-Cane connector trail to Edwin Warner Park. The connector is pretty flat, and I took it fairly easy to try and fully recover before hitting the Blue trail in Edwin Warner.

After a brief fluid stop at the Nature Center, we headed back onto the Blue trail and into a pretty difficult climb. Marc said something to the effect of “Tim you’ve been looking pretty strong today, you can lead us up this hill.” I went to the front, but by this point the combination of the heat, humidity, and hills had left my legs feeling pretty fatigued. I still had enough energy for the climb, but I was not picking up my legs like I should have been. Because of this I tripped and took a second fall on my way up the hill, this time scraping up my knee a bit…

After Kelly helped me back to my feet, I decided to just hang back with the pack and let Sue Anne, Aine, and Marc lead the group. By the time we finished the Blue trail I had completed 13 total miles, and was completely toast. Even though my schedule called for 14 to 16 miles, I just didn’t have another mile in me. I honestly think this is the most fluid I have lost on a run this year, and it was obviously a very challenging route.

Even though I did not get in my scheduled distance, I think I easily got in as much work (or more) as I would have on a 14 to 16 mile run on the road. I was on my feet for almost 2 hours and 15 minutes, and as I mentioned earlier, had over 3,000 ft. of cumulative elevation gain through the run.

The bad thing about only getting in 13-miles today, and missing my Wednesday run due to illness, and only getting in 6-miles at track Thursday due to the extreme heat, is that this broke my 9-week string of completing 40 or more miles in a week. I came in just short this week with 39.3-miles completed. However, I’m pleased with how well I felt today overall, and that I don’t seem to have any lingering effects from my mid-week illness.

Beast Mode….ON!