Building an Ark: It's Good Strength Training

The Lord told Noah....there's gonna be a floody, floody!  Random fact:  At the age of 4 I could be found  dancing around the house and singing that song any time it was raining.  My parents probably regretted taking me to Sunday school for that reason. :)

We have had some monster rain this past week.  The trails were pretty wet and muddy on Thursday night for my tempo run, and as soon as I got home from the run, the skies opened up again.  And didn't let up until the morning. I got home from work to find my very own duck pond across the street!  Yay.  I also found 9 bazillion newly hatched mosquitos that were thirsty for my blood.  Boo.

Saturday I was scheduled to do my 12 mile long run.  I woke up, ate my breakfast, planned out my route to avoid the flooding, and promptly passed out on the couch.  For some reason I convinced myself that I would be ok doing my long run at 10am instead.  I must've been delirious because there is no way that would work.  It was in the mid-80's with humidity and the route that I had mapped out had zero coverage from the sun.  I decided to switch it up to 6 and do 12 on Sunday.  I'm a genius, btw.

That "easy" run was one of the hardest I've ever done.  Wow.  I was sweating my butt off and just struggling all around.  Plus, I live in a valley-ish area (hence the duck pond) so to run anywhere other than the bike trails it's all up and down "hills".  I understand hills aren't the end of the world, but when you're trying to do some easy junk miles they suck ass.  I ended up cutting the run short to 5.5 miles because I couldn't come up with a reason not to. :)  I also took a 1:45 walk break in the 3rd mile because I thought I was going to melt otherwise.

Can we talk about how impressive my perspiration is for running a slow 5.5 miles?

I did 5.5 miles in 55:52 for a pace of 10:02.

Sunday I was able to peel myself out of bed for my long run, but did.not.want.to.  Can you tell next week is my cut back week?  I start to lose it mentally when I'm coming up on my easy week, and my legs tend to follow suit.

I stepped outside and it was already toasty at 7:30.  I decided to try to get an out and back 5 miles on the bike trail before hitting the sidewalks for lame-o rolling hills around town.  I was shocked at how high the water had been (based on the muddy dirty debris left behind).  Far more flooded than it was after the spring thaw.  There were some extremely muddy areas that I had to try to walk around, but it should be runnable (hopefully) in a few days.  The first few miles were pretty slow and I was feeling the fatigue in my legs from running a hillier route than they are used to the day before.
1. 9:53
2. 9:53
3. 9:46
4. 9:50

The middle few miles I had to pee so bad (tmi, I know) that it was making me nauseous.  More than once I contemplated asking some random people doing yardwork if I could use their bathrooms.  I was dyyyying.  I should've just peed myself since it looked like I had anyway because I was sweating so much.
5. 10:12
6. 10:03
7. 10:21
8. 10:08

For some random reason, the last 4 miles I was fine.  The miles were still slower than normal long runs, but at least I didn't feel like I was going to vomit.  I ended the run with 3x as many mosquito bites as miles ran, so all in all I'd count that as a success.  ;)
9. 9:56
10. 9:53
11. 9:52
12. 9:54


12 miles in 1:59:29 for a pace of 9:58.  I managed to run 13.1 miles last week in roughly the same time.  It's amazing what 15-20 degree difference can do to your pace, eh? :)