A Little Break

We arrived home late last night after a short July 4th visit to my grandmother who lives in the U.P. of Michigan. With no Internet access there, I had a little "break" from posting. But not from training.

Last Tuesday we had a welcome break in the heat for some speed work. Yes, I was running the evening before we were leaving. 3 X 800's and 6 X 400's were on order. All in all, a great workout. I still need to check, but I believe I ran my fastest 400 and 800 that night. EVER! I just need to check to make sure.

The drive takes all day so we like to leave early in the morning in order to arrive in the afternoon. It was a long cloudy drive with rain in Ohio. In fact, parts of northeast Ohio were getting dumped on with epic amounts of rain. Fortunately we didn't encounter any of that for our drive. Just wind and below average temperatures. And mosquitoes. Our first rest area break at the Michigan Welcome Center landed us in a swarm of mosquitoes. It was harsh.

The small town we were to stay in for the holiday puts on a 5 mile run every year on the morning of the Fourth. We've run it the past two years. It was my intention to run it again this year, but with everything that needs to be done that morning and only Mrs. P and I to take care of things, I thought it best to forgo the race for a long run. The kind of long run I haven't done since mid May and Rite Aid.

I mapped a course online before leaving and would let the weather help me decide if I would run it or just loop around town. The weather turned out not-quite-ideal, but bearable so I went with Plan A. The course was an out-and-back to the next little town. The road looked somewhat residential on the near side that slowly became less inhabited the further I went. And that's pretty much how things actually were. 9 miles out and 9 miles back. But I wanted 20 miles so I did a loop around and back to the house for 20 on the nose in 2:45. Not race pace, but certainly not bad. I was worried about running into bears but only saw two deer and a locomotive engine. It wouldn't be a bad road to ride on someday. Straight, flat, and very little traffic. That was Friday morning.

On the 4th I watched the runners head past the house and didn't envy them. I wasn't sore, but tired. And that was enough to keep me in check. We had a long day heading down to watch the parade and then over to the local festival. Then it was back to the house early to do some grilling and relax. I had a nice 2+ hour nap that afternoon. We watch fireworks from 3 communities from the beach across the street that didn't wrap up until 11:00.

Upon waking Sunday, I discovered I wasn't hungover. Not that I was expecting to be, but it's happened on the mornings of July's 5th in the past so I wasn't ruling it out. With some morning energy and a spring in my step, I was out the door again for 5 to 6 miles. During the run I decided upon 6.2, giving me the marathon distance split between the two runs. Again, not fast, but not crawling either. Just a nice recovery run.

Back to the track tonight for some more speed. Time to start building those 800s for the fall marathons. And speaking of scheduling, just three more training weekends before Steelhead. That's getting me more than a little worried today.