Running With Jack

You know you’re a runner when you get up at 5 a.m. on your vacation to run your long run at least that’s what I read somewhere. This is also what I did this morning, up at 5:00 and on the run by 5:50 in the neighboring town of Weingarten where my hilly route is. If you have been reading my blog you might realize that I just ran a marathon 5 days ago so I was about as uncertain as any of you on how far I should run this morning.

I started out nice and easy on my first loop. You might recall the loop consists of a 6-7 minute warm-up on semi-flat forest paths, a 7-8 minute hill climb, 30-40 minutes of rolling hills, another 6-7 minute hill climb, more rolling hills, then finally a rapid downhill stretch back to the 'start'. I usually finish a loop in around 1:15:00-1:20:00.

So anyway, the first loop went well, I felt good, just like a well-oiled machine. The second loop also went well, albeit a few minutes slower. I made it back to the 'start' after about 2:36:00, not too bad of a time, and I still felt good enough to run some more. At this point I had to make a decision whether to keep going. Tomorrow is the annual 8.88889K Baden Mile race that I do with a group from my company and it is very competitive. On the other side today is probably my last long run before my 50K on May 25th, so it was important for me to get the time in.

I quickly decided that my priority was my training and headed up the hill again, the Baden Mile be damned. The third time up the mountain was hard, but I ran all the way up, no easy road for this dude. After reaching the top I had about 40 minutes left (to complete my planned 3:30:00 run) so calculated about where I needed to turn off the normal loop to make it back to the car. I arrived at the car by 3:26:00, so turned around and ran 2 minutes out and then back again to bring me over the 3:30:00 cutoff. After 5 minutes of walking and a lot of stretching I headed home, totally satisfied with my training run.

My legs are kind of sore as I write, but in a good way. Tomorrow I am going to the race and jog to the finish my coworkers can pick on me if they want I know what I accomplished this week :-)

So next week it’s back to work, I’m sure by Monday night I will be stressed enough to where I need to run again. Have a great weekend!