Training Log Archive: hughmac4

home <> work

Valley Forge Fatlands after a lot of rain ... not as flooded as I thought it would be. Good dueling with Alison Campbell for the last third of the course helped get my speed up.

Great turnout (out of various maps at the end), beautiful day, awesome!

Juliet had fun on yellow!

home <> work

3 cemetary laps from work. Felt good! Surprising what a few degrees F does.

home <> work

Home <> Work

Tried to go for a swim last night, drove to the gym, forgot my ID. Drove home, got my wallet, drove back to the gym, my ID was in my pants pocket. Drove home in defeat and had dinner.

C • :) 2

Bike to/from work.

home > cemetery (1mi) 9:20 warmup
1 lap (1mi) 7:40 pushing (5k pace? wow I'm slow) (seen entry below)
cemetery > home (1mi) 9:24 warmdown
Cooler today (81F), and much less humid. Nice (relatively!).

4 intensity grass mile as a baseline ... sheesh I have no spring, and form is probably crap, but I can't remember what form IS, so still experimenting with it ... some acceleration glides may be useful? And tempo. And intervals. Hah. One day at a time.

Odometered the cemetery route with Juliet:

Home > Woodlands = 1.00 miles!
1 lap at Woodlands = 1.00 miles!

Unbelievable. That really makes the math too easy ... I'll have nothing to do while I'm on course. And sadly need to adjust old run distances DOWNward, although not by a lot. The gmaps-pedometer is good if you do the manual method and use the aerial photos ... I re-did some maps and was within 1% of my odometer distance. Nice.

Wanted to get these distances (from gmaps-pedometer) in here for computational purposes:

NOTE: these times proved a tad optimistic, see tomorrow's entry:
Home > Cemetery :: 1.07 miles (through main gate)
Work > Cemetery :: 0.55 miles (through main gate)
Cemetery Lap :: 1.03 miles (border trail)

I don't trust the distances yet as I've never checked their accuracy with the bike. I'll get it out and check them sometime soon, since combinations of these are some of my most frequent (that's relative, yes) runs.

So today was home > cemetery then 4 slow laps then back home. Sooo hot and humid, but I found myself pushing a bit (counter to the plan) ... I was surprised to stay near 8:30s. Feels like it's worth MORE in the jungle of Philly summer too. :) NOTE: and I found out it was, see tomorrow's odometer walk.

I think I'm going to add my bicycle commuting to work miles from now on ... I've been curious how much I do in a year, but really only have a rough guess. I should probably note dog walks too, as I generally do a couple of miles of walking a day with Blitz, but ... nah.

Pottruck > Woodlands Cemetery x 3 laps > Pottruck. 89 degrees F, but nice and sunny. HOT on the street, nice in the cemetery. Intensity 3 because of the heat.

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3105251

Raining, uber-humid, just ate dinner, but needed to get out of the house. "Running The Numbers in West Philly" :: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3092246

Good fun downa shore in the 99% humidity :: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3092276

No run for weeks, so I'm porked up and weak too ...so off to a post-thunderstorm red course at Mount Penn Pagoda after noticing that there wasn't going to be another local meet until the 20th. Mega-rain on the way there, but it had stopped before my arrival. Everyone was a bit water-logged though ... THANKS for sticking it out on the top of the hill guys!

The woods were very wet (lots of standing and running water everywhere, particularly on trails), but surprisingly clear for August. The green's weren't as green as expected ... a nice surprise. The rocks didn't magically disappear though.

The socks I brought were a bit too thick for my Jalas (and my feet are a bit bigger, those are old shoes), so I wore my Asics, which were fine but definitely need better insoles or to be 1/4 size smaller. Super comfy though.

Fun, straightforward course, not too torturous except for the backside slog towards the end of the course. It wouldn't be Pagoda with out it!

Only a couple of noticeable mistakes: overshot #7, classically while 'head-to-head', and ran right by it (about 2 minutes?), then on #11 I made a parallel error because #10 was misplaced (I think) by about 75m, which I noticed, but I didn't quite believe myself ... I was tired, there was a lot of vertical and no handrails, blah-blah. So I milled around at #11 for nearly 5 minutes before bailing out to the trail downhill because I didn't want to waste altitude, etc.

My best move of the day: I managed to spill about a gallon of icy water off the top of the registration tent onto Mark Frank while standing around at the finish. Sorry Mark!