Friday night, set forth on a long run with Crystal. We left right around 8, and decided to run on the bike trail as long as there was some light in the sky - I was thinking we might get 4 miles tops, then would have to do road running. Weather was hot and humid with a slight breeze - about 85 and didn't really get much cooler as the night progressed. Started out on the trail headed out towards Troy, which has one major hill/bridge but relatively flat. First couple miles were rough - tired from the long work week, and had problems loosening up in the nasty conditions. We got about 2 miles out and I asked Crystal if she thought we should turn back, but she nixed that idea and said let's just run in the dark since there was enough external light (from houses, lightening bugs, moonlight) to see so we progressed on. Turned around a mile later, and finally started to get into a decent rhythm. Made our way back to the beginning of the trail but decided to keep going and ended up going out 1.5 miles the other way. Wasn't feeling too bad, but was stuffy in the wooded areas of the trail which made it uncomfortable. What was cool was a storm was coming our way, so could see the lightning in the distance. Headed back into the wind (absolutely refreshing!), and was definitely pretty dark at this point. Got back off the trail and finished the final 3 doing loops around her neighborhood. Was drained running the last 2 miles, but felt ok otherwise. Total mileage: 12 - splits ranged from 8:05 to 8:18 (first mile was 8:27, but statistical outlier). Glad to have a relatively consistent run on a HUMID evening.
Saturday, played in a golf tournament over in a local course in town. Not much to report - hit the ball pretty poorly, and our team underachieved in general and we walked off the course in disgust. Found out later that we somehow won the B Flight (and a nice cash prize), and my eagle putt on our second hole won all the skins (another nice cash prize), and one of our team members won the long drive contest so we ended up cleaning up a bit! Ended up playing some more golf after the tourney and melted away in the sweltering heat. Dinner and ping pong later, and I was done.
Sunday morning, woke up bright and early to go with Crystal to run the St. Peters Rec-Plex Triathlon. She and a few coworkers run this every year, and the event is a team sprint triathlon - 500 meter swim, 20.5 mile bike, 4.5 mile run. I ran last year as a rabbit for Crystal, and their team finished 7th overall, with Crystal finishing 3rd overall runner. Pretty fun event, great to see so many athletes roaming around. Course is on a narrow trail through some neighborhoods and around town, and pretty hilly. The trail is a bike/running trail, and is very narrow, windy, and hilly. The swim portion started at 6 a.m., so we warmed up about 45 minutes later doing a mile shakedown. Weather was already starting to get pretty nasty - hot and humid and very sunny. Crystal's teammate Linda started the swim and absolutely blazed through it, passing a ton of people to establish a great position. Her other teammate Tom ended up killing the bike portion, which put their team at 4th place when Crystal and I started. The original plan was to go out in 6:40 and try to hold the pace through the rolling hills of the course. Immediately passed 2 runners at the start, then we were off. Felt pretty good going out, and had to slow down to conserve energy for later. First mile has a ton of sharp turns, and runs mainly through the woods. Passed through a water stop, but the volunteer wasn't ready so was a little frustrating to miss that. Second mile, started to feel the heat, and was having trouble tracking my pace because of all the trees blocking my garmin signal. At this point in the race, Crystal and I were running side-by-side and we saw a water stop coming up - I signaled for the volunteer to splash me with a cup - well she did, and in the process Crystal missed her water and we weren't in a position to stop and come back. I felt absolutely terrible and was bad communication on my part - should have dropped back instead and let her handle the water stop. Hit a huge hill going through a neighborhood, and we had to stop for a quick walk break but were quickly on our way. 3rd mile was a lot of hills back in the woods, and finally got our water (cold, thank you!). I was trying to gauge how Crystal was running to set pace, as we weren't going to hit 6:40's on this day because of the heat. Was tough to rabbit for her because the trails were so narrow and we kept running into runners coming the other way, so was a little frustrating. Last mile, was watching an approaching runner trying to move up, so we surged at a few points to create a gap and took a walk break towards the end. Hit the home stretch hard, and held off the opposing runner by 20-30 seconds. Kind of a bittersweet run, as the time wasn't great but we did what we could given the conditions and had good effort, so I guess in that sense it was successful. Total mileage: 5.5 (1 mile warmup) - splits were: 6:42, 7:13, 7:18, 7:17, don't remember last part but 6:40 pace. Walk breaks the last 3 miles skewed our splits.
Bridge at the beginning/end - sadly, the trails weren't much wider than this!!!
Finish line of the raceFound out later that the team finished 2nd overall of 36 teams, so was extremely excited to have helped out as a rabbit! Crystal was the 4th fastest runner - very impressive on a tough running day. More hardware for the Harriss household - Congratulations Linda, Tom, and Crystal!!!
Last week's running was ok - got about 30 miles, felt good about all the workouts in general. Didn't hit great mileage so need to pump that up a bit before the true marathon cycle begins. The weather is getting hotter and hotter every day, so most of my runs will be extremely early or extremely late...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment