Month: November 2017

I couldn’t run Wednesday due to cold and rainy weather. I will run in the cold, and I will run in the rain, but I won’t run in cold and rainy weather. Then, yesterday, I had a friend come over for a standard Thursday evening get-together, and tonight is a celebration for the Marine Corps Birthday at my friend Steve’s house. Tomorrow morning will be my only opportunity to run this weekend, as tomorrow night is the Marine Corps Birthday Ball, and I am fairly certain that I will be in no shape to run on Sunday. Sunday evening, I have a concert to go to which then leaves me with only two runs again this week.

I need to pick it up and do more. I will work as hard as I can to get my three runs in this coming week, and I also endeavor to add at least two days of bike riding into the mix.

Tonight, I set out to running a faster pace, and almost burned myself out too quickly. My first half-mile pace was 7:10/mile. Wow! That’s likely the fastest I’ve run in a very, very long time. I noticed I was burning myself out quickly, though, and if I were doing an APFT, I would keep that pace (or at least do my best trying), but since I knew I was going 3.1 miles, I slowed myself down. My first mile, I slowed to as close to 8 minutes/mile as I could, going over a bit, and because of the extreme speed in the early run, my subsequent second and third mile pace declined a bit, but I was still able to come in at a good 8:19/mile average. I’ll take it!

The one weird thing on tonight’s run is the number of bugs I ran through. When I got in the house and looked in the mirror, I looked like I had freckles from all the bugs stuck to the sweat on my face. I know a few flew into my mouth and into my eyes during the run. The ones in my eyes burned for a bit. The ones in my mouth didn’t taste too bad.

Today, I decided to take it slower than usual. Going into the weekend, I figured I may as well just go slow and enjoy the run. After hearing my first half-mile pace, however, I decided that I was going too slow, so I picked up the pace a bit. I can’t allow myself a 9+ minute/mile pace! 

I picked it up for my second and third miles, but since I had done a bunch of drinking the night before and it was really hot out, I quit at exactly 3 miles even though I had intended to run 3.5 miles. It just wasn’t going to happen.

So, not my best run, not my longest run, but I’m happy with it nonetheless.

View my run on Strava.

Surprisingly, I feel great. I ran longer last night than I have in a very long time, and I was expecting my legs to be sore, but the opposite has happened; they actually feel great. Normal, even.

I’ve been holding back from running longer distances out of fear that it would leave me feeling too worn down or sore between runs, but today, I feel amazing.

My next run will be a 3.5 mile run. Adding another 1/10th of a mile doesn’t seem like much until you are running them and building distance. I won’t run the longer distance unless I can do so at my sustained pace for the previous distance, so that means keeping it at 8:30/mile or faster pace.

Oh, and the Astros won the World Series last night. Not sure if that’s helping my legs feel better, but it sure feels good.

I was given some new exercise shirts today, and I figured I’d give one of them a try on a run tonight. It turned out to be a huge mistake, as when I got in after this run, my nipples were burning and slightly bleeding. Ouch! But, I’m still very happy with this run tonight. It started with a quick 10 push ups to see where I’m at with the elbow. No surprise: there’s still some pain, so I stopped after 10 very easy push ups. I was surprised at how easy they were. I know; 10 isn’t much, but I was thinking there’d be some difficulty, but there was none at all. That’s good to know. I’ll continue to sit out doing push ups for November and try again in December.

As for the run, I started off with a decent pace and was able to keep it up for the entire run. I decided to go for a little more distance tonight and I was happy to make 3.4 miles with ease. Heck, it just felt really good. Finishing with an 8:20/mile average pace over the 3.4 miles is a win for me, and I’ll take it.

I feel good after my runs, and even during the runs, while I’m pushing to keep the speed up, I find myself not really being out of breath or having to tap into any reserve to get the speed and distances I’ve been running. I will run again, hopefully, on Friday (as planned) and my goal is to raise the distance to 3.5 miles or more. No, I’m not working toward anything right now except maybe to be able to run a 10k sometime next year. I do have a 5k coming up in December, but at this point, barring any injuries, that one will be pretty easy and I should be able to post a new personal best with relative ease.