Week 4: Six miles

20:40 sec run/walk ratio
1:36:49 hours
6.42 miles
15.1 minutes/mile

I had a really good run today! After a very false start yesterday—I planned to get up early and drive to Lancaster for the Met Opera broadcast, which started at 9:30 AM, so I knew I wouldn't be able to run in the morning. Originally, I thought I'd just run on Sunday—which is what I ended up doing—but then I thought, well, I'll see how I feel when I get home from Lancaster. If I had energy and the weather wasn't too bad, I figured I could do my run in the afternoon.

As it turned out, though, I slept very badly the night before, and felt exhausted and wonky all day. Plus, it was raining and cold. I still went out around 4:20 PM and started plodding around the house, but it was not working out. My stomach was achy and I couldn't get into a groove. I was trying to count laps on my phone, but kept forgetting to mark them. And I was worrying about something I'd posted online that I thought maybe I shouldn't have. Finally, I decided to go in and delete the post and then continue my run, but once I got in the house, I just bagged it. Decided it was silly to push myself when I was feeling so icky when it would be just as easy to run the next day instead.

And so I did. And it was much better! I slept well last night, got up early feeling refreshed and ready to go, and the weather had cleared up quite a bit. It was still windy and cold, but only partly cloudy and no rain. I decided to go to Meadowbrook Park for a change, and I really enjoyed it. So much nicer to have long trails to run on instead of going round and round the house. It was cool enough that I didn't bother trying to get there early. I think I left here around 10 AM, so it was probably 10:30-ish when I got started. I ran the first mile with my hoodie and two pairs of tights, but then I was warmed up enough to drop them off at the truck and run in just my tee-shirt and one pair of tights for the rest of the way. My arms got a bit cold in the breeze—especially when there were clouds blocking the sun—but not too bad. The rest of me stayed warm enough.

My time was really good! Fifteen minute miles, and I wasn't even pushing myself at all. I wasn't tired when I finished, felt like I could have easily kept on for another couple of miles.

Even though I had GPS turned on, I used only about a third of my phone battery. Still probably won't last through a whole 26-mile run with GPS, but I did buy a battery stick to charge it up with on the go, so I hope that will keep it going throughout my training runs. Of course, if I run at Meadowbrook, I don't really need the GPS—I know how long each segment of the trail is, so I can just do the appropriate number of loops. But it's fun to have it keep track of my miles and pace. The only problem with the battery stick is that I have to unplug the headphones to plug it in, so I'll be without headphones while it's charging. But that's better than having the battery run down and not have the phone at all!