7/22 - 7/28

My running lately has been pretty hit-and-miss lately due to the whole getting married, family, and heat things.  So, sorry for the lapse, all you maybe readers out there.  But hopefully I haven't lost too much fitness in the intervening two weeks.

Monday - 3 miles, ~ 00:22, Home

Just a short run to get my body used to moving again.  Perfectly fine run.  Spent the rest of the day switching between computer code debugging and packing up my apartment.

Tuesday - 10 miles, ~ 1:28, Lake Monona Run

Been getting tired of running on the trails lately due to the incessant mosquito population.  Once you start sweating it doesn't seem to matter how much repellent you've got; those mosquitoes will find you and eat you to death.  It doesn't help that I just saw on the news that Dane County recently had it's first reported West Nile case.  So, regardless, I'm trying to limit mosquito exposure, meaning I broke my rules and ran on some roads for a bit.  This was a slightly more difficult run than I'm used to 10 miles being lately, but I got through it just fine.  There were a lot of hecklers on the roads though.  It was kind of disappointing.  One guy made a farting noise at me as I ran past him, and another guy yelled from his passing car something negative about me being shirtless (which I am about 90% of the time when running in summer and usually goes without remark).  It just kind of dampened the spirit of the run.  Why would someone go out of their way just to be mean like that?  But I got home and was welcomed to a room full of mess and moving boxes.  Got to do something about that soon...

Wednesday - Off
Spent the evening preparing for a Washburn public observing night.  Was a good open house, but didn't leave much time for running.

Thursday - 5 miles, 00:41
Casual run.  Still feeling a bit behind the curve on fitness.  But hopefully that'll be back up soon.  Did run into a 7 year-old kid who wanted to race.  He kicked my ass.

Friday - Off
Donated blood for the first time, so the day was obviously off.  Felt fine after giving.  We'll see how subsequent runs go.

Saturday - Off
Kind of spent the day not feeling great.  So, stay in bed is what I did.

Sunday - Arb - 24 miles, ~4:02
I mentally prepared myself to treat this like the most painful run ever.  It's been 3 weeks (I think) since I've run more than like 10 miles, and I'm missing ~10-15% of the red blood cells that used to be in my body.  But I knew I was in deep need of getting some big miles in if I'm going to even hope to finish my 50 miler in a month and a half (whoa!).

With that in mind, I just went as easily as I could make myself, which was good as I found myself getting winded pretty easily.  But eventually I settled into a nice shuffle and ran this 8-ish mile loop I kind of came up with on the fly.  Around mile 12, I noticed my left ankle giving me trouble, so I adjusted how I came down on that foot, and that seemed to help out drastically.  Given this is a recurring feeling, I was pretty stoked to figure that solution out.  About mile 18 was when the pain cave kicked in.  I was proud to have held it off for so long.  From then until the end, it was just a mental gutting it out.  Every mile or two, I'd stop for 10 seconds or so and do a few squats; they seemed to help hamstring pain, as some cramps were trying to creep in there.

But mostly a good run.  My body is noticeably getting better at handling itself when the miles hit the 20s.  Otherwise nutrition was all right.  I think I had 4 gels, a Lara bar, and "super fuel" Pro Bar, along with the electrolyte mix in one of my bottles.

The oft-mentioned turkeys.  This photo turned out terribly blurry, but I feel that somehow accurately conveys the relationship I've developed with these turkeys.

New flowers in the Arb.  I haven't identified them yet, but will soon.  They were showing up almost every where the purple prairie coneflowers were.  So I'm imagining they're somehow related (or not. I know very little botany/biology).

Been digging this song since I heard it on Orange is the New Black (a pretty good show I recommend).  Something about being married has lately made me very fond of dissonant themed songs.  I wouldn't suggest reading too deeply into that...

7/1-7/7

Monday/Tuesday - Softball/Off
Did some light softball on Monday evening.  Time-trialed on my commuter to the bar for some bar trivia after the game.  Tried to beat my friends in their car, but 5 miles proved to be a little too far for me to outpace them by bicycle.  Still, they only beat me by a minute or two, so I did all right.  Tuesday was another off day.  My knee was still feeling a bit bum, and I just was feeling in a funk anyway due to this problem I'm having trouble solving at work.

Wednesday - 1:35 - Arb
Finally coerced myself to run again even though I was uncertain about my knee.  Knowing I haven't run in a week and haven't done anything longer than 10 miles in like 2 weeks, I didn't want to get into a mindfuck and opted to put electrical tape over the distance and pace sections of my Garmin screen.  After the first mile, I realized I also had to turn off the one mile auto lap.  But after that, I have no idea how far or fast I ran.  Planning to keep it that way until I feel 100% with my knee again.  Instead my goal is just to make sure I'm out on the trails for at least an hour a day and just run until I start to hurt more than I feel like I should for a recovering body.  Hopefully, I start feeling solid soon enough, and I can go back to cranking out 20+ mile runs again.  Until then, we'll see.

But the knee was sketchy for the first 45 minutes, so I'd stop and walk a section here and there until I felt good again, and then went again.  By the end of the run, my knee was feeling fine, as in I wasn't noticing it anymore.  What happened instead was my ankles from 2 weeks off the trails began crying out from all the varied terrain, and then I opted to head home.  Going to try to do this again tomorrow before 4th celebrations happen in full.  Happy America day, everyone!

Oh, also, saw some new turkey babies today!  As I accidentally snuck up on them, my goal was to appease the situation and get out of their way.  Otherwise, I might've tried to grab some pictures.  My bad.

Thursday - 2:03 - Arb
Knee's feeling even better than yesterday.  It's even stopped doing the weird locking thing when I walk.  So, maybe a dose of trails was all that was needed.  Spent the day just trying to go down different trails that aren't in my brain catalog.  This lead me to having a few stare downs with some turkeys and scaring away a raccoon that was munching on some of the blackberries all over the Grady and Evjue sections of the Arb.  Even had a brief moment with the doe below.  We stared at each other for a good minute or so, long enough for me to pull out my camera and snap a picture.

Also ran with the Ultimate Direction AK vest again.  Been making myself do that lately to get used to the fact that I'll probably have to wear it in actual races.  But made it to two hours today without any problems.  Started to feel the tired legs that I've come to expect to hit around mile 14-15, so I'm feeling like I've probably already bounced back from my brief week-long respite.  Will probably take tomorrow off and then try doing a 4-ish hour run sometime this weekend.

Friday-Saturday - Off

Sunday - 3:30 - Ice Age Trail (IAT)
This turned into a messy day.  I was ambivalent about driving out to the Kettle-Moraine forest and putting in heavy mileage, so I resisted until about 3:00 pm, when I knew I'd run out of daylight if I waited any longer.  The flaw in this was that the heat index had just peaked above 90. Regardless, the first hour or so was pretty good.  There were swarms of mosquitoes, but the bug spray I had invested in with supposed ability to survive sweat was finally keeping bugs off of me for once.  So, I stopped along the way and took some nice photos without fear of bites.  By the time I reached the section of trail where I had planned to veer off onto a horse trail, the wheels had started to come off.  I was pretty certain there was a water fountain in the parking lot off of this trail, but the trail dead-ended like 2 miles into it before I got to the parking lot (I still don't know what the deal was, but I couldn't stop to figure it out due to the mosquitoes now attacking me).  But I knew there was a forest headquarters about a mile further into the IAT, where I had veered off.  I turned around and got back on the IAT, and at this point almost 2 hours in, I was out of water, but was feeling well enough.  By the time I got to the headquarters, I was starting to not feel that great.  The heat and low amount of fluids had started getting to me.  My goal at the headquarters was to chug some water, get as wet as possible, get rid of the buckets of sand that had filled my shoes while I had been on the very sandy horse trail, and then get going.  This turned into a 15 minute ordeal as every time I tried to stop moving, I was instantly attacked by mosquitoes (ie: that so-called sweat resistant bug spray sucked balls)

But I got going, and I was so mad about the sand from before that I refused to take the horse trail back to my car and continued on the IAT the same way I'd come in.  I also figured with decreasing daylight and the foggy head that comes after many hours in the Sun, a new trail wasn't advised.  But any time I tried to stop to check my blood sugar, I was destroyed by mosquitoes, so I couldn't stop to get anything from the back of my vest or really slow down from a run at all.  And the gels I had up front had become unpalatable, probably from the heat+dehydration.  Trying to eat them made me start gagging.  The only nutrition I could do without throwing up was the hydration mix in the bottles.

And so it was a 10-ish mile death march of pain, mosquitoes, and dehydration back to my car.  Even better, I had forgotten how technical the last mile to my car would be, and the waning daylight turned that into a nightmare with me tripping on roots and rocks all over the place.  My body was unhappy with that.  But I made it back to the car and headed to the fountain across the street and chugged two bottles of water, ate the PB&J I'd prepared, and drove straight home.  After a few hours I even talked myself into eating a light dinner!

Totals:
~45-50 miles
~7 hours

White-tailed doe in Arb.  We had a brief staring contest.

Some pretty Arb flowers; if I'm identifying them correctly, I think they're purple prairie coneflowers (they were in the prairie).

The iconic yellow blaze of the Ice Age Trail:

A "scenic view" along the IAT:

And this, because why not?

6/25 - 6/30

Tuesday - 9 miles, ~1:16
First run in 4 days.  Probably the longest break I've had since the end of 2012 when a plantar fasciitis flare-up kept me out for a week or so.  Took a little while for the legs and lungs to remember how to work, but after the first mile, everything just rolled together.  With all the storms lately, the Arb trails are flooded all over, and I had to stick to the road, which was super lame.  And the recent uptick in humidity meant that my shorts were completely soaked through by the end.

But I tried out some Skratch Labs raspberry mix to see if I could use it as an S!Cap substitute, but it was hard to tell with a sample size of one.  I might give it another shot, but will stick with S!Caps for the most part as they just work for me.  Also had a go with the peanut butter GU flavor.  It was basically like eating a spoonful of peanut butter that goes down a lot easier than real peanut butter.  It was great.  Probably will mix that in with my current mix of GU flavors.  

Wednesday - 5 miles, 00:39
A meh run for the most part.  Only interesting parts were the humidity and some dude I ran into.  The humidity and heat are terrible right now.  It was only like 82 degrees F, but I was drenched in sweat by the time I was done running.  It's already getting old fast.  Other thing was I ran into some guy who looked like a terrible runner, but turned out to be pretty fast.  I think I've developed this mentality as of late where I need to prove that I'm still fast even though I'm logging the vast majority of my miles between 8-9 minutes.  So, I just book it when I see someone faster than me and turn it into an unspoken race to see if the person will try to keep up with me or not.  This one was bad because the guy just kept up with each steady increase I had.  By the time I was running a 6 minute pace, I was toast, and he was still there.  So, I did a disgraceful pull off the trail like I was turning down a different street and pulled myself together with him out of sight.  I've had prouder moments.  But I got home fine and drank some water.

Today's other fun fact is the entrance I use to go to the Arb is actually closed because Lake Wingra has flooded it.  I don't know when this will fix itself, but if the weather keeps up like it has with the rain, I may not see an Arb trail any time soon.  Not sure what I'll do in the meantime, but I guess I'll figure something out.

Thursday - ~3.7 miles, 00:30
Seemed like I was finally getting the hang of the heat and humidity today.  But this niggle I've been noticing in my left knee for the past week or so (probably last Wednesday if these logs are accurate) was a little worse today than usual.  So, after mile 2, I started slowly pacing myself home.  Relatively certain it's an IT band issue, as I recall this niggle being the first thing to pop up when I really screwed my IT band a while ago.  So, I'll do some massage and exercise for it and rest the next day or two, but hopefully I can treat this before it becomes a real problem. 

Friday-Sunday - Off
Been feeling like a bit of a shut-in, but figured it was better to rest than push on and try doing my 24 mile long run this weekend (duh!).  Going to do softball on Monday, and then try doing the Arb Tuesday afternoon for an easy 7 or something.  If that works, I'll celebrate the almost 4th holiday by trying to do that 24 miler on Wednesday.  But we're playing it all by ear.  Currently, my knee's feeling stronger, and a few, short jogs in front of my apartment felt good.  But who knows?  I barely know what I'm doing.