Running With Jack

What a difference a day of rest makes, wow! Last night I stuck to my decision to take a rest day. I surprised my wife by showing up just as she was leaving work and took her out for dinner – nothing fancy, just a street Cafe around the corner in the main market area of Karlsruhe. We enjoyed watching the scurrying shoppers rushing around doing their errands before the rain slowed them down, had some good food, and just enjoyed sharing the time together. The best part is we only had to walk 50 feet to the tram (street car) and could ride it home (no rush hour traffic, park-houses and stress).

This morning I feel rejuvenated, ready to take on another back-to-back long run tonight and tomorrow. My wife is going to take advantage of my absence this evening to work on her Technical English course, so I have this side covered. I only haven’t decided whether to run the flat route around my town tonight and the hilly route tomorrow, or the other way around. Physically it would probably make more sense to do the hard (hilly) run first, but mentally it is better training to do the flat run first than the hard one when I’m more worn out tomorrow.

It will probably end up like it usually does, it will depend on when my wife gets home with the car – the hilly route is 7.5 miles away (all asphalt – yuk). Of course I could run the 7.5 miles to the hilly route, run a couple loops (8 miles x 2) and run 7.5 miles home, but I think I will save the 31 mile training run for when I train for my 100K race next year ;-)

At this point I prefer more time on the softer hilly route and none on asphalt (The Asphalt Phooey Principal - TAPP).