Or at least as normal as I get :-))). Work schedule has at least for last week & this week resumed to something resembling normalcy. Nothing out of the ordinary to write about there except Lola the truck had another episode of the internal clutch overheating & me having to fight my way across 3 lanes of Mines Road in Laredo with the truck surging & the transmission jumping from 3rd to 5th gears the entire way. Y'know the problem that International couldn't replicate & won't be able to replicate because the damn thing is in the beginning stages of wearing out. Excuse me for trying to get problems solved as soon as they occur rather than waiting for a tow truck on the side of the road. Sigh, the problem is not with our shop, the guy in charge is the one who diagnosed what the issue is and actually listens to me when I say there's a problem. The issue is that Lola is still under warranty & has to be sent to the dealer for the repairs--WHERE they don't listen to me, grrrrr.
All right, now to the fun stuff. Or sometimes it's fun stuff, right now working out is feeling like a chore because of training for the Marine Corps Marathon in the midst of the dog days of summer. And has it ever been HOT........My long runs are absolutely miserable right now, I'm not enjoying them and getting very ill-tempered the day before and of. Sigh, why did I ever sign up for things that would require a regimented schedule throughout the hottest time of the year?
Sunday--Couldn't bear to wake up at 0330 like I was supposed to so postponed it an hour. Got out the door at 0450. 12 miles 2:10:17. Not fun but better than last week, took liberal walk breaks without beating myself up about it, it's just too hot to stress over it.
Monday--James woke me up in Tennessee on what was supposed to be my rest day, asking me to go run with him.....I decided that we would do some nice hills then, lol. These hills are fairly short but very steep, so yeah I was being kinda mean. 3.35 miles in 44:01. Lot of walk breaks again.
Tuesday--rest day that was postponed
Wednesday--I ended up having to wait at Laredo overnight for a trailer so went down to the Mall del Norte before sunrise & ran circles around it. 5 miles in 51:58, first 3.something miles were with Elsie so slow again.
Thursday--here's where I decided to do something different this week. I'm also training for the Hotter than Hell 100 tour and I've been doing a hard cycle on Saturday then a long run on Sunday. Makes for very tired legs so this week I thought I would do my long run while out on the road. On Thursday mornings I'm usually always almost home so that's actually a great day to take my time driving back. I had 14 miles scheduled and picked Prescott, AR to run them at.
Well, I almost got 14 miles! ended up with 13.47 in 2:17:19. Yep, that would be a faster pace than Sunday's run :-))). As a matter of fact I had negative splits for the last 7.47 miles, all but 1 of them at sub 10 minute per mile pace. As for why I didn't get the last .53 mile in, well my last 4 miles were in full sun & I started feeling dizzy right at 13.25 miles. That 1/2 mile isn't gonna make or break me so I did the sensible thing & walked back to my truck. Prescott proper by the way has some very beautiful older homes so if you ever get a chance to run there I highly recommend it.
Thursday afternoon--yep there were two workouts that day. Due to the screwed up schedule I'd been missing the Thursday afternoon rides and it was very much affecting my performance on Saturdays. Only 2 of us braved the 99F (100+ heat index) but we ended up having a great much better time than I expected. I forgot to write down my mileage & time before clearing out my computer so I only know the mileage because of a text message. 24.17 miles in ????. There was one 3 mile stretch that we were able to keep a 20-21mph average with no drafting. I'm kinda impressed with that, lol.
Friday--rest day!!! Slept in until 0630, woke up but stayed in bed. Dozed, read, dozed, read until around 1030 am, BLISS........
Saturday--We'd been invited to go kayaking up at Greer's Ferry Lake so I wasn't able to ride the full 60 miles that morning. A couple of the slower riders (as in my slow speed) decided to start at 0600 & make the faster riders play fox & hound, LOL!!! Worked out perfectly for me. Looked over the route & decided that at the Hwy 16 intersection I could turn back east & be back home by approximately 0830. The only issue is that's an 8 mile stretch of highly traveled road with most of it having no shoulder. We rarely have any flat routes and this was no exception. First part had us cycling west on Hwy 36 up Joy Mountain, I was down to 7.4 mph going up that sucker, no shoulders and all the gas drillers heading out to work in their diesel pickups, FUN........or perhaps not, lol. Granted this is not the 9% climb of Dugout Mtn but the 5% lasts almost 3x as long (little over 1.5 miles). After that was mainly rolling hills on Hwy 310 but there is one decline that has a 30mph rated left curve on it....umm, I might could've received a speeding ticket here ;-). Now back to the Hwy 16 intersection, this part heading back into Searcy is almost uphill the entire way, not huge climbs but steady and there is no letup. I was struggling to keep a 13-14 mph average through here, didn't think it was ever gonna end! Burning quads.........owie. I did time it out perfectly, got back to my house at 0828! 40.73 miles in 2:28:52.
The rest of the day we spent at the lake, ended up kayaking approximately 5 miles according to the guy who invited us........It's been darn near 2 years since I did any paddling solo so I was sloooow. The guys kept having to stop and wait on me to catch up. Oh yeah, I forgot to re-apply sunscreen so my knees, chest, shoulders and stomach are bright red today. Yes, I wore a life vest while paddling but took it off when we were tied up watching the cardboard boat races.
I had planned on running the Dam Night 5k last night at Arkadelphia but we didn't get out of Heber with enough time to make it :-((((. I was gonna use that as my speed work for the week.
Sunday--didn't set an alarm so ended up waking a bit late to get my 5 miles in comfortably. There was supposed to have been a 3 mile tempo run at 8:33 pace in the middle but had stomach issues & couldn't start the faster pace until 1.78 miles in (and a visit to a bathroom, ugh). Needless to say I didn't hit the pace marks (8:41, 8:44, and 9:11, last mile was uphill) but considering the heat (89F, heat index of over 100) and my sunburn, I'll take it.
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