End of the Month
As I write this I'm eating an amazingly good pastrami and provolone sandwich. What makes it delicious is not so much the ingredients as it is the act of satisfying a craving that arose during this morning's run. Also adding to the delicious taste is the view from the kitchen window, which shows a nasty miserable cold rainy day out.
I paid my dues to obtain this feeling. Deirdre and I made arrangements for a long run this morning, rain be damned. And that's exactly how it went down, rain be damned. When I left the house it was a drizzle that teased with the prospect of letting up totally. It was still that way when I got to Deirdre's and still that way as we trekked up 22nd Street and made a loop around Eastern State Penitentiary. From there we took the backroads to Lemon Hill and by the time we got there the rain started coming down. Coming down so that I was wet before I could snap to putting on the windbreaker I had tied around my waist.
There is no one I'd rather run in cold rainy weather with than Deirdre, in that the conditions didn't seem to faze her and the attitude she kept remained incredibly positive. At one point we started talking about how, when we finished the run, we'd have license to do anything we wanted to do (or do nothing at all) for the rest of the day. Not in the sense of "oh I'm so miserable I wish I was ..." but more in the sense that running this long run was the best thing that we could do this morning. And this was running down Haverford Ave. into a headwind that was pasting my waterlogged shirt tight against my chest. I think I would have run even if Deirdre didn't join me, but I can't see that I would have run 2 hours. It takes a village.
15.5 miles in 2:07:51.
Yesterday Reba and I went to run on the Drives. The conditions were as ideal yesterday as they were awful today, with a weak, late autumn sun barely warming the mid afternoon. Reba did her run and I did mine. Left to my own devices, to stave off boredom I did a progression run with the object of getting a faster split for each of the 8 marked miles of this loop. The only rule was that I could only look at my splits on the half mile and on the mile.
I did pretty good at this, with times:
Mile 1: 8:26
Mile 2: 7:42
Mile 3: 7:35
Mile 4: 7:29
Mile 5: 6:54
Mile 6: 6:44
Mile 7: 6:29
Mile 8: 6:23
Ultimately taking the pace down to mid 6 range felt fine, so it was less challenging to do this little exercise than I thought. But I was most proud of having 4 of my 7 miles come within ten seconds of the previous mile split. That is how you want to play this game, keep the time improvement slight so as to minimize the added effort. My big mistake was mile 5. Still not sure how I sped up so much there.
Did a few cooldown miles to get in 10 miles in 74:48.
These two runs put me over 71 miles for the week and 277 miles for the month. That means November has been the most productive month for me since March, when I was at the tail end of my 1000 miles in 100 days stretch. As you can probably tell, I feel good about my running currently. And braving today's elements to ice those weekly and monthly numbers makes the accomplishment all the sweeter.
I paid my dues to obtain this feeling. Deirdre and I made arrangements for a long run this morning, rain be damned. And that's exactly how it went down, rain be damned. When I left the house it was a drizzle that teased with the prospect of letting up totally. It was still that way when I got to Deirdre's and still that way as we trekked up 22nd Street and made a loop around Eastern State Penitentiary. From there we took the backroads to Lemon Hill and by the time we got there the rain started coming down. Coming down so that I was wet before I could snap to putting on the windbreaker I had tied around my waist.
There is no one I'd rather run in cold rainy weather with than Deirdre, in that the conditions didn't seem to faze her and the attitude she kept remained incredibly positive. At one point we started talking about how, when we finished the run, we'd have license to do anything we wanted to do (or do nothing at all) for the rest of the day. Not in the sense of "oh I'm so miserable I wish I was ..." but more in the sense that running this long run was the best thing that we could do this morning. And this was running down Haverford Ave. into a headwind that was pasting my waterlogged shirt tight against my chest. I think I would have run even if Deirdre didn't join me, but I can't see that I would have run 2 hours. It takes a village.
15.5 miles in 2:07:51.
Yesterday Reba and I went to run on the Drives. The conditions were as ideal yesterday as they were awful today, with a weak, late autumn sun barely warming the mid afternoon. Reba did her run and I did mine. Left to my own devices, to stave off boredom I did a progression run with the object of getting a faster split for each of the 8 marked miles of this loop. The only rule was that I could only look at my splits on the half mile and on the mile.
I did pretty good at this, with times:
Mile 1: 8:26
Mile 2: 7:42
Mile 3: 7:35
Mile 4: 7:29
Mile 5: 6:54
Mile 6: 6:44
Mile 7: 6:29
Mile 8: 6:23
Ultimately taking the pace down to mid 6 range felt fine, so it was less challenging to do this little exercise than I thought. But I was most proud of having 4 of my 7 miles come within ten seconds of the previous mile split. That is how you want to play this game, keep the time improvement slight so as to minimize the added effort. My big mistake was mile 5. Still not sure how I sped up so much there.
Did a few cooldown miles to get in 10 miles in 74:48.
These two runs put me over 71 miles for the week and 277 miles for the month. That means November has been the most productive month for me since March, when I was at the tail end of my 1000 miles in 100 days stretch. As you can probably tell, I feel good about my running currently. And braving today's elements to ice those weekly and monthly numbers makes the accomplishment all the sweeter.
posted by seebo | 1:07 PM
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