Recapping the past week

Well, a week ago we got drier air, and it has been better since then.  This did not make my 12-mile run on Sunday any more fun, but I am getting ahead of myself.  My 5-mile on Saturday was definitely better; I don't think that I broke any speed records, but I was feeling pretty good during that run.

Then came the 12-mile on Sunday.

For various reasons, I was in Clearwater, which is far from where I usually run (like, far as in it would have added 2 hours to my day to drive back, which was a bit much).  So I decided to run on the Pinellas Trail instead.  The Pinellas Trail was a railroad line that has been converted into a trail.  It runs from St. Petersburg in the south to the northern part of Pinellas Country.  All well and good.  Parts of the trail were very nice, like the parts near Dunedin.  Parts, though, were not so good for running because there was little/no shade, by which I mean the parts near Largo.  Little/no shade is not okay for running in Florida.  I should have known something was up by the ratio of bikers to runners: more bikers usually means not a shady trail (an observation taken from my experience with the Suncoast Trail, which starts with a straight mile devoid of shade).

The Pinellas Trail has two other aspects where it could do better, I feel:

1) I ran a good 5 miles of this trail on Sunday (I had to loop earlier than anticipated because of the complete lack of shade near Largo).  There was not one bathroom to be found.

2) Ditto on drinking fountains.  There was one--ONE!!!!!--functional one in the whole 5 miles I covered on the trail.  If you're curious, there was one non-functioning one.

Now, I wasn't counting on drinking fountains for actually drinking the water, more as a cooling off option by dumping the water on my head.  Instead, I had my fake Gatorade in the car and arranged my run so that I passed it at the half-way mark (so I went 3 miles north, came back, refilled water bottle, then tried to go 3 miles south except that there was no shade.  In theory, it was a great plan).  But I would think that in Florida, of all places, you could have more than one drinking fountain over a 5-mile stretch.  That's not okay.

If you do happen to be on the Pinellas Trail and you need a bathroom, the bus station is not far from the trail in downtown Clearwater.  This is the best option, I think, apart from creating your own bathroom in nature's wilderness (while being sure not to invade someone's yard).

So what's been happening since then?  Well, I haven't been running.  I survived the 12 miles, but haven't been feeling well at all.  It's one of those pre-cold tired things, I think.  Alternatively, Sunday did me in more than I thought (which wouldn't surprise me at all because it was brutal).  When you're not feeling well, it's amazingly difficult to motivate yourself to go running in conditions that are already tough.  My plan is to get back on track Saturday and finish up the training program.  This has been the year where I get sick, so I guess we are not through with that yet.  I think that it should be okay since this is taper time, but trust me that no one is more annoyed at this setback than I am.