It's been a busy week here ... we were at the in-laws all last weekend, and they are here this weekend. So the Engineer and I had to hustle this week to get our house cleaned/straightened before they came. They may say they don't care if the house is clean, but I do. (And come on, isn't that a big lie anyway? We all care.) And while we didn't get it as clean as I would've liked, it's in decent enough shape. The biggest help, I guess, was buying some shoe racks for by the front door and deck door and me finally throwing away some old running shoes. We have so many shoes that hang out by the doors, so corralling them made a huge difference.
I am so behind in e-mail and blog reading (stupid Bloglines told me I had a bunch of posts to read and then ate them), but a big thank you to the Minnesotans + D for being so nice after I whined about being a loser. It's also reassuring in a weird way to know that the rest of MN is like this, too. While I still think things would be a lot easier if we lived in the TC suburb areas as I'd actually have job opportunities and more than 1 running club to choose from, it's a good reminder that it wouldn't automatically all be flowers and sunshine.
I normally would recap my running after being gone for a week, but I think it can mostly be summed up in a word: sweaty. The humidity in southern Illinois last weekend was pretty awful; I came back from running both mornings completely soaked. I'm used to getting the little ring of sweat along the top back of shorts, but this went well beyond that and kind of disgusted me. Good thing I was able to go straight for the shower or pool! Tuesday, I wore a tanktop because I didn't think it was going to be that hot, and by the end of my 11 miles it was soaked and see-through. Gross! I was smarter the next 2 days and left the shirt at home.
I wore my HRM again on Thursday and came up with a totally low-tech way to solve my chicken/egg problem: electrical tape over the heart display. True, it kind of defeats the purpose of wearing the HRM, but since I don't follow the principles anyway, what's it matter? I'm just curious to see what my HR does, and it's more truthful to how I run if I can't see it apparently. I don't have my log in front of me, but I think I averaged 9:12s (?) and my AHR was 164 (76% PE, I think). My watch pissed me off - apparently when the memory is full it can't take any more splits. And apparently it was full, so I only got my first mile and then the other 9 all lumped into 1 split. Suck. I guess it could be considered a good feature, but I would've rather it deleted the oldest run. I cleared out almost everything from there so I shouldn't have that issue again.
I'm racing a 5K this morning, and if they are going to have the miles marked, I think I might wear the HRM. I'm still not convinced that 199 is my true max, and I thought i'd read sometime that the finish of a 5K can sometimes get up into the range. Since I'll be allegedly running at 95% PE, it should be interesting to see that that is, too. I don't know if the whole family is coming with or not ... the Engineer said earlier in the week that he didn't want to go, and I usually don't make him come with me to these little races. I feel it is important to tell him when I actually don't care and not lie about it, so that when I say it is important to me that he comes he knows I'm serious. I get kind of cranky about having crowds of people around me before I race (especially non-runners because while they mean well, they generally want to ask questions or make "jokes" about if I'm going to win) so we'll see. This isn't a bad race to come watch, since it's 1.5 loops around the lake so you can see people start, at mid-race and at the finish, but since I need to run 3 miles afterwards it'll be boring. I should get going though!
Good luck during your 5K. Which one are you racing? I will HOPEFULLY get out for a race tommorow. We'll see.
Good luck with the race and you were missed. :) I just finished my 18 for the day, done for the week but I came up one mile short of 50. I might just go run one tomorrow just to get to my first 50 mile week ever. heee
I've been checking all week for updates and glad you're finally back!! Hope the race went well. I ran that half this morning and it was a really good one, I even managed a PR even though it was only a "training" run, and it was a 4 minute PR...that included a 5 mile "warmup"...Hot and sweaty is not fun, I can totally relate to those last week. Nothing like being dripping wet at the end.