Summer is here

Its that time of year again. The early morning high humidity, then the high temperatures throughout the day. None of which are conducive to running. I guess the cool weather during the spring and winter has spoiled me. The only thing that gets me going now is races or speed work. Long slow runs are just long slow and dreary but I think as I get more used to the heat that will get better. Biking is great when its hot so thats a good thing.

I more or less took Tuesday off as a rest day after the duathlon. I did get 4 miles on the spin bike at the Fire Department while I was waiting on training to start Tuesday night.

Wednesday I ran from our house to the track to meet Annette and Michele to do our speed work that we would have normally done on Tuesday. This gave me a 3 mile warm up. It was pretty warm so I felt really sluggish on the warm up ending up with a 10:34 pace.

We were going to do the intermediate workout but somehow I got ahead of Annette and Michele so I more or less did the advanced workout. Mine was somewhat modified and it went like this:
1x800@LT pace
5x400@INT pace
2x200@INT pace

The speed work was really not too bad. It was pretty hot and when we ran south on the track it was very warm with no wind and then when we turned to the north side we got a little breeze which made it bearable. All in all the speed work added another 3.5 miles so I ended up with 6.5
for the night.

Speed work tends to make my heel really sore so Thursday night I thought I'd do a little recovery run and see how things felt. Again, it was very hot, mid 80's and humid. I really felt like I struggled through every mile. I just ran around the neighborhood till I got 3.1 miles. The 10:16 pace felt more like 12. I know its the heat and humidity.

Today (Saturday) I ran with the group from South Side. We started at 7am and the sun was already out and bearing down on us. There were several new runners so we tried to run slower so we could stay closer to them and make them feel more a part of the group. We did a lot of walk/run but I got to run with Jane, Joan and Steve so the conversation was good. At 8am we met up with Vicki's group and ran with them for about 1.5 miles or so. Total I ended up with 7 miles and an empty water bottle. If you run now you better carry plenty of water!

Heading to the river trail on Sunday to watch a sprint-triathlon then bike with Bailey. Should be fun!