Running With Jack

The weekend flew by it seems. On Friday I hurried home after work, changed, and drove to the neighboring town of Weingarten to run on my hilly route. It was a mild 20°C/68°F and I had a three hour plus run on my schedule.

I headed out over my normal route, warming up on a relatively flat stretch, then heading up the first major hill climb. When I reached the plateau on top I ran over the rolling hills and down the other side of the mountain. I then wound my way over an entirely new route which brought me over several steep hill climbs, pounding downhill's, very scenic vineyards, fields, woods, and finally back to my normal trail and my car.

I rolled in after around three hours and 20 minutes, covering 20 miles, with a total of about 1350 meters (4000 feet) of elevation gain. My legs were tired and sore, but in a good way.

On Saturday my legs were a bit stiff, but by the afternoon back to normal. I completed a long list of to-dos around the house, including varnishing the last flower boxes for our yard. Tonight I have to pick up some potting soil so we can plant the boxes - we decided to plant spinach instead of flowers, nothing like harvesting fresh spinach when the cold weather comes around.

On Sunday I met a member of my running club, Iris, for a run. She is training for a half-marathon in September and doesn't like to run alone. It was sunny, but cool (low 70's °F) as I ran by her house at 9:45 a.m. and we headed out over a bike path towards the next town, Blankenloch. Iris wanted to run about two hours at about a 6:00/km (9:40/mi) pace. We settled into roughly this pace and cruised over some beautiful field paths, forest ways, finally looping back to her house after two hours and several minutes.

Due to our chatter we actually were running faster than Iris wanted to, around 5:50/km (9:25/mi), and covered over 21.5 km. Iris looked totally fit after the run, she is totally ready to blow the half-marathon away in September - and she still has five weeks to train! We plan on running again at least once or twice before the race - if she keeps it up she will running a PR race for sure!

I spent the rest of the day trying to catch up on a project for work. I did manage to get in a nap in the afternoon, that felt great. I wish everyone a great week!