Hot Hot Hot!

It's been way too hot here!

After my uplifting last post, I started slowing down. I ran 5.5 miles on that Wednesday, followed by another race on the weekend. It was only a 4 miler and I wanted to turn it into a long run. Unfortunately, I had issues getting out of the house in the morning, and I didn't have time for much of a run. I ran a little less than 5 before the race, followed by the 4 mile race.

It was hot! I had a hard time even doing the slow mile before the race. I was keeping track of the time, and I knew I was tight for getting back to the start line on time.

This was the first race I'd be running since they started the corral system. When I picked up my bib I saw it was blue. It was only when I passed the start area before the race, that I realized that this was the first corral. I'm an elite! (Ha!) I guess because the race was capped at 3,000 runners I ended up in that first corral. As it turned out I got to the start area 5 minutes before the race, and the guy didn't let me into that corral anyway. Truth is I was wiped anyway and I didn't care, but that was the first of the several volunteers who yealled at me that day. Sheesh!

I ended up starting in the middle somewhere. AS you can see I started really slow, and was therefore able to run negative splits.
8:34
8:13
7:59
7:32
My final time was 32:15 for an 8:03 pace, about a minute off my best. Because of the heat though, I was happy enough with this result.




Pretty painful progression through the race!

The following week I didn't run the entire week until the weekend. I'd like to blame it on the heat, but I don't really remember when it got so hot. I was supposed to run a race at 5:30am on Wednesday. It was supposed to rain, but I laid out my stuff and got up at 4:30 anyway. When I looked out it was dark and wet, and I didn't really need the race. So I went back to bed.

I also remember getting up early on Sunday to run before it got too hot. I was up at about 6:45 and when I checked the temperature it was already 80 degrees. And heating up fast. I'm embarrassed to say, but I chickened out. Again. I did end up running a tempo run on the treadmill later, but even that was tough. In retrospect I could have been deconditioned, but I'd like to think it was the heat in the gym. I only peaked at 7.0 mph but I was totally drenched from the effort.

Today, I went back to the track. I've been fooling around with making a training schedule for the marathon, and it has me looking at the FIRST book again. My last 5K PR was so far ahead of where I was before, that I wasn't sure which paces to use as my training goals. In the end I chose the group based on a 22:00 5K - as compared to 23:00, which I used at the end of the last training cycle.

I decided to run 4 x 800m intervals today, mostly because of my time constraints. According to the book, my pace for the 800's should have been 3:16. I kind of remembered running 3:28's in the past, but I didn't look it up. (I was wrong.)

In any case, these are how my splits went for today's 800's:
3:07 (hey, this is going to be easy)
3:17 (whoops, not that easy)
3:22 (glad i'm only doing 4 of these)
3:25 (maybe if i start slower i can finish faster. guess not.)

So as you can see, I need a little more work in the speed department. Then again, have I mentioned that it's been really hot here? It was in the 80's and that's got to count for something!

This weekend I'm traveling, but I hope to get a run in on Monday. The following weekend I'm supposed to volunteer at a NYRR race, but I'm on call. I tried to sort this out in advance, but the help I got from the NYRR was suboptimal. (They took too long to respond.) I'm going to try and make the volunteering job, but if I can't, it's going to be a real pain to make up. We'll see...