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Week 210
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Greetings, fellow 50+ers! Life has gotten busy again. Along with the online class that I've inherited due to a sudden retirement, I've started my summer teaching gig over at UK. These 4 and a 5 credit classes taught over an 8-week summer session, compared to the usual 16-week semester, makes for a torrid pace for the students, and a lot of prep work for me. I'll be glad when the online course ends July 10th, but for the next few weeks, I'll be up to my eyeballs. It's already affected my running this week. But honestly, the heat has, more so. Still managed to hit 30 miles for the week. The log reads as such:
Sun: 5.0 miles easy (7:58 pace)
Mon: off (9 consecutive days was enough)
Tue: 6.2 w/4x1000+3x200 (354,356,357,354,39,39,40)
Wed: 3.2 miles easyish 7:40 pace, just to get something in before sundown.
Thu: Off. First day of class, sweltering heat.
Fri: 5.5 with 1 hard trail-mile (6:58) 3.3 miles were on trails/grass.
Sat: 10.0 easy (8:30 avg pace)
Intervals on Tuesday felt pretty good, though the 4th 1000 was a struggle (1 lap jog recovery between). The 200s were meant to be controlled focused more on form than speed (1/2 lap jog between).
Friday afternoon's run in the hottest part of the humid 89 degree day, was meant to be easy in the shade of the forest, but I got impatient, and ran two laps around the 1/2-mile trail loop at a high effort (it's kind of winding, so hard to go too fast, so 6:58 pace is close to maxed out). As per usual, once I've done a "fast" mile, the rest of the run is a struggle.
Saturday's run was in the morning, but it was already over 70 degrees, and the humidity level was near 90%, so even though the run was easy, there were some pretty drenched runners by the end.
Given my weekly schedule for the next few weeks, I'll be hard pressed to get my mileage back up to over 40, where I'd like it to be, so we'll just have to coast through these hot summer days. Our 10-day forecast doesn?t show any let-up, so I'll have to get used to the idea of sweating it out to those 90+ temps like Gretehund deals with most the time down in Texas.
I'm still planning on running the 10K on the Fourth, but I'm already lowering my expectations for what I'll be able to accomplish there; I've just not put in the tempo work necessary.
Thanks for the accolades last week. I'm happy to continue pushing this thread forward, but mostly I'm happy that you all are a part of this discussion. Hope everyone is doing OK.
Oh! And I don't know if there are fewer mishaps in the summer...personally, most my major injuries seem to happen in August. I think usually because I tried to extend my 5K summer racing season too long, and I should have taken it easy while the going was good.
That was pretty cool, SCGal, for your teammate, Sonja, on her WR W40 mile record (4:45.68)!
Nice racing last week, Spikez! As I recall, you still hadn't really started working on the blocks, so....
Dave, I hope that your race went well, despite the concerns about niggles leading up to it!
All the Best!