Okay, so a decent amount of stuff happened, so I’ll update on that.
Week 5 (8/10 - 8/16)
Week 5 was much like weeks 3 and 4 from Monday to Friday. I broke my watch early week 6, so I don’t have any data for this week, and it’s been long enough that I don’t remember the specifics.
Saturday to Sunday,(8/15-8/16) I went on a backpacking trip with a friend. This weekend turned out to be the hottest of the year, and when we started out(at 1pm), it was above 100 degrees. This, along with carrying a backpack, and 1500 feet of elevation gain made for a very hot, miserable day(It was a great heart rate workout, though). I had brought 4 liters of water, but with the amount I was sweating, I was worried we would run out. We finished the first night at a lake, where we filtered some algae tasting lake water. The next morning, around 3am, I realized that there was a lightning storm relatively close, and we decided to leave early, to “avoid” being stuck in a storm(the storm was moving at 45mph, fat chance at that). The storm missed us entirely, though we finished the trip at 8am(18 miles total).
Week 6 (8/17-8/23)
Monday and Tuesday were just easy runs, although on Tuesday, frustrated with my gps watch not showing correct heart rate data, I whipped it against a street traffic light, effectively breaking it. This heat wave is getting to me :)
Wednesday - Woke up at 5am, my room was smokey from relatively nearby fires caused by the lightning storm that swept through California. While checking fire related news, I realized that my grandparent’s farm, where I work, was under evacuation, and it sounded like the fire had spread through there. I told my parents, who called my family there, and apparently, my uncle and some cousins had been up since 1am fighting fires that were at the edge of our property. The way it was described was that “no buildings on our property had burned down yet”
My mother and I came at 9, to relieve those who had been fighting the fires since 1, and to bring some food. Driving up, the sun turned pure red, from the amount of smoke that was in the sky. Because the roads were blocked by police, we had to sneak in through roads going through our neighbors property, to get to my grandparents. Going into our property, the hills were all black, and there were 2 dead cows burned by the fire. By this time, the fire had essentially burnt itself out here, only leaving hundreds of small fires all around the property. For the rest of the day, I put out fires using a water wagon and tractor. At night, you could still see dozens of small fires on the nearby hills.
Over the next couple of days, the rest of these fires burned themselves out (or were put out) Luckily, while the surrounding hills were burned, none of our buildings burned down, and neither did our orchards.
What’s crazy about this, is that at 1am, my cousins and uncle watched a wall of fire march down the nearby hills. Once it came close enough, they sprang to action, doing their best to create defensible territory, and put out whatever fires they could, and prevent it from spreading to the nearby houses. If they weren’t there, our houses there would probably be gone.
Many of our neighbors nearby had their houses burned down. For the first few days of the fire, NOT A SINGLE firefighter showed up.
Week 7 (8/24-8/28)
The farm has mostly returned to normal, besides a bunch of fallen trees, and up until Friday, 8/28, we had no power, so had to use generators. Since the air quality has been awful(~200 most days), I haven’t been running. However, it’s better now, so I’m going to continue my training. My current plan is to run Saturday and Sunday this week easy, and easy runs for all of week 8, where I’ll run a new 400m (and 800mTT, maybe) somewhere in the middle. From then, I’ll continue on to phase 2 of the training plan.