Saturday, June 18, 2011

Staying on schedule...somewhat.

In case you are wondering, I did make my 3-mile run on Thursday in Munich before heading to the airport.  It was a titch humid, but it was still done, and that's all that matters.  I did the same Theresienweise route as Tuesday because I thought it might be unwise to try a new route on a day when I had to get a flight.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, I thought that I would go running this morning, but the heat index was somewhere between 91-100F around 9am.  Ew.  Many people advise that you run first thing in the morning before sunrise, but from my experience, that is when the humidity is at its worst.  So I prefer to go around 8am-9am.  The sun is a bit hotter, but still manageable, and the humidity is not at the 99.9% level like at 7am.  This morning, though, it was hard to get excited about going.  Also, I wanted to go pick blackberries and learned that the pick-your-own closed at 11am (and is the other side of town), so I decided to skip this morning and get on the treadmill later.

That didn't happen because I invented home improvement projects that needed doing.  Like I went to Target and bought the stuff needed for not one, but two home improvement projects.  By the time that the first one was done, it was too late to get to the gym.  It's entirely possible that I was putting off running at this point.  Okay, it's more than possible.

I finally managed to convince myself to go around 7pm and also made a modification in the plan.  I was supposed to run three miles today but realized that this would not go so well considering that I am not at all heat adapted.  So I opted instead to run for 30 minutes--which is around the time required to run three miles (ha!  Okay, not really, but it's not that far off)--with walk breaks every four minutes.  I hate walk breaks, but I decided that in this case, it would probably be beneficial.  They aren't harmful from my experience, even if they are somewhat annoying.

The first 4-minute run really didn't feel so bad, mostly because there was a breeze that cooled things slightly.  However, it also looked like there might be weather accompanying this breeze, so I decided to just run around my complex instead of venturing out in my neighborhood.  Weather did not arrive during this run, but I would really prefer not to be caught in a sudden storm here.  Even more than Munich, that can be dangerous.

The second 4-minute run felt somewhat worse, with the remaining ones feeling progressively more difficult. I do have to say that I don't feel as icky as I did last summer when I first starting heat adaptation, but that is just fine with me.  Last summer was close to torture.  I haven't quite decided what to do about tomorrow's 5-mile run; chopping it up is still probably the best plan, even if that does necessitate going in the morning.

Did I mention that it is only six more days until Pittsburgh and that on two of those days I get to rest?

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