Thursday, June 24, 2010

The Running Greatness Streak Ends

Well, I had told Adam that I was worried about peaking too soon this year b/c I just had such a great streak of about 10 days of awesome runs (even though I tuckered out on the last time up Loving hill each week).  No worries now, the streak is over.  Hopefully to repeat in mid-Sept and then the first week of Oct! 

Felt pretty bad this morning and can't pinpoint why.  Best guess is lack of sleep.  We were up really late getting ready for this dinner party, making dips, setting the table, prepping other recipes.  Then we went to bed and heard noise from people camping outside our house.  This seems to happen about once a year or so, whenever there's a big release at the Apple store.  I guess a new phone comes out today.  Either way, one person started camping more than a week ago.  Then a few days ago, there was a second person.  But those two were camping right outside the store and the only ones in line.  Well, last night the line size grew exponentially, long enough to stretch for blocks toward the residential area.  I seriously don't get it.  I wonder if most people are going to resell them at a profit, in which case, depending on the profit and your circumstances, it might be worth camping.  Or are these people who just really need to have the phone the first day?  I heard the person in the second tent was paid $500 to wait in the line and I was like $500 for three days of your life?  Who on earth would do that?  I guess if I were in college or grad school maybe, but right now I can't see agreeing to that. 

Oh well, I saw the crowd this morning and at first thought it was people out running and was worried my clock was wrong and I was late.  But then I saw all the chairs and the semblance of a line and realized what was going on.  They all seemed very "up and about" given that it was about 5:10 a.m. 

The second bad factor was the heat.  It's Texas and it's June, it's always hot and I get that.  And I actually don't mind it.  It doesn't usually bother me when I run, unless I'm running in full sun and don't have a hat or visor (and sometimes even then it gets me, but if it's not sunny, I'm good).  But this morning before we even started running, it felt oppressively hot and humid.  As I understand, the temps are at their lowest just before sunrise, and our lows are about 80 these days, so it was probably only 83 or so.  Shouldn't have been an issue.

Anyway, the schedule was 7-9, which means 8 to me.  I felt like I was struggling before we hit mile 1.  So that made me think the problem also might have been last night -- I had a late sushi dinner, which probably isn't great fuel, even though mine had a lot of brown rice.  But one of the good things about running with a group is that I really wanted to keep up with them -- for the conversation and for pride.  We had a nice run out to the lake, and hit the water at 4.16.  A majority of the group decided to keep going to make it 4.5 (for 9), but I and two others u-turned then.  Within the first mile on the way back, I was struggling and when asked how I was doing, told them to go ahead without me, that I was okay and knew the route.  David said we'd just dial it back to 8:45s.  A few minutes later, the big shortcut came up, and I took it, along with Tony -- I again told him it was fine for him to go, and he said "you'll only hear birds chirping when you ask me if there are any complaints to walking a bit".  We walked under the bridge to the parallel road and then started walking up the hill while we waited for David to run up to the next road, go across the bridge up there, and then catch up to us.  He caught us right at the top of the hill, which means I got to score a whole uphill walk!  Just like back in my walk/run days!  I managed to stay with them the rest of the way, but I think the pace was much slower than on the way out.  I wanted to walk but realized that David would probably stop with me, and he had a flight at 8:50, so I felt the pressure!  We ended up just over 8 in 1:12, running avg of 8:37s (or straight up 9s if you include the water stop times).  All in all, fine. 

Tight left hamstring when stretching afterward, still some heel pain on both sides, mostly on the right. 

No comments:

Post a Comment