Monday, April 19, 2010

slow run in the sun

The weather on Sunday was supposed to be cloudy and rainy with temps in the low 60s. It ended up reaching the upper 60s and the clouds disappeared. My daughter wanted to go out for a run in the jog stroller so I could hardly refuse. We got out onto the road just before noon. I tried out my new REI tech running shirt and threw on the Cascades again. We started out with a slower pace in mind and headed to the tunnel trail. With all of the rain lately there were some messy sections of trail near the top. My daughter said that it looked like "glupity glup and sloppity slop", which she quotes from one of our favorite books, The Lorax. It was slow going up the trail and especially getting the stroller (with her in it) over the big mud puddle that has a bunch of small logs in it to make it easy to walk over but impossible to roll over. This involved much lifting of the child/stroller combo.

Once we got over the trail, we continued up Artondale drive toward Kopachuck State park. We turned off the road across from Kopachuck and took some time to play at a school playground. We had fun on the equipment and I had time to do some pull-ups and push-ups using the play structure. After we had our fun we got back on the road and continued following the contour of the shore until we arrived at the Island View store. This is a popular mid-run stop for me when I'm on my own or out with the jog-stroller. We sat outside and looked over the bay toward Raft Island while we ate our peanut butter cups and chocolate milk.

After our snack we loaded up again and headed down Ray Nash drive to continue the loop. Ray Nash intersects the other end of Artondale dr. and allowed me to get back onto the Tunnel Trail. From there I repeated the earlier muddy portion of the run in the opposite direction. The trail lets out to some private streets that we followed almost all the way back to our street.

The weather was absolutely fantastic. Just on the border of too warm with a slight breeze to cool us off. I was never too hot or too cold wearing just a short sleeve tech shirt and a pair of shorts. We stopped a few times along the way to look at cows, horses, and donkeys up close so time wasn't a priority. My knee wasn't terribly happy with the run. There were a few times that I didn't notice any knee pain but most of the run was irritating to my knee. I'm trying not to worry about the possibility of injury and hope to take care of it and go easy. Maybe I'll run every 3 days for a week or two until it feels better and skip the speedwork for a bit. Time will tell.

Time: 1:12:07
Dist: 7.5
Avg: 9:37/mi

2 comments:

Denise said...

Hey!! I totally appreciate the comment and thanks for challenging my reasons. Everything I do is just to challenge myself. I don't plan on wearing a bright yellow shirt to work every day and shouting out my # to other maniacs. I'm doing it b/c there was a "standard" out there that you had to accomplish in order to achieve the status. It gave me something to shoot for and a goal and that's what drives me. Not everyone has run 3 marathons close together...that's why I'm doing it. As for fast runners in Ultras...the 50 miler I did last year was NOT about speed. I had only done one marathon and that ultra was about pushing myself. Same for this next one. I want to go further than 51 miles...I'll do it as fast as I can while being smart in the heat but my main goal is challenging myself and sticking to it. Thanks for following and thanks for the comment...I think I'll do a post about this! :-)

Denise said...

I tried to email you but your email wasn't w/ your comment...this was the only way I knew to respond. Feel free to comment back!