6/18 - 6/24

Tuesday  – PM – 6 miles: ~00:50

Legs were pretty wasted from yesterday still.  Pretty certain I didn’t eat or sleep enough following that run.  The eating part hit me pretty early on because all I wanted to do was find some food from mile one.  But eventually the legs shook out, and once I hit the dirt trails a mile out from home, I picked up the pace a little bit.  Was wearing the Newtons.  I’ve been running in them since January, and it’s finally looking like they might be near the end of their lives.  We’ll see how many more short distance road miles I can get out of them.  But managed not to get attacked by the blackbird by the Yahara River bridge.  That counts for something.

An aside: Started reading Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac today.  Found the following pretty true to how I consider things lately: “The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to turn off the tap.  Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.”

Wednesday – PM – 4 miles, ~00:33

Geez.  What a surprisingly rough run.  My left knee just felt like it wanted to hyperextend to hell or something.  It kind of felt like that all day even at work.  So, I didn’t feel comfortable putting any speed on, even though I typically would have with a run this short.  I did some browsing through the workout catalog and found I’d managed to skip my hip abductor exercises for like a week and a half.  So, I did those after the run, and the knee is already feeling more secure.  Geez.  Those strength training exercises will come back to bite you if you skip them, apparently.  I’ll probably make sure I stick with those daily for the next week or so till I’m confident everything’s cool.  

But I got my Ultimate Direction AK Vest today.  Going to happily make use of that to more easily cash in on some midweek Arb runs after work.  The vest should allow me to stash the valuables that I’ve rather inconveniently been hiding in obscure pockets of my bike panniers while I ran.  No more!  And hopefully since this will allow me to carry my phone more easily on Arb runs, this log might see some photos from the trails!

I also found myself reading about hydration and hyponatremia today.  I recently found that during even relatively short runs (~8 miles) my feet and hands would swell so much that blistering toes were becoming a legit problem.  That’s when I started taking S!Caps during runs longer than 1.5 hours.  That seemed to work well for me.  So, I went back and did a log of my daily sodium intake and found that with my diet’s emphasis on vegetarian and unprocessed foods I consume about as much sodium as an elderly man with a heart problem (at least I presume), meaning the S!Caps kind of made sense for me given my absence of a sodium backlog.  But presumably, sodium tablets aren’t a hyponatremic necessity for most people on a typical western diet.  Anyways, it’s interesting.  Maybe I’ll take a look at the book at the focus of this discussion: Waterlogged.

Thursday – PM – ~6.5 miles: ~00:55

Rode to the Arb after work. It was a pretty hot day, but I seem to have acclimated to the heat well enough by now and wasn't feeling too bad. Plus I had my new vest on, which gave me two full bottles and all the snacks I wanted for a short 6 mile run. Upon pulling into the lot I typically start from, I discovered the pole behind some bushes I usually lock my bike to had been taken by some snazzy, much shinier looking bikes; the horror! Anyways, so I set out from the visitor's center, where there were bikes racks, for the first time ever. Pretty much all the trails that had been closed so far this year were finally open thanks to the rain finally stopping this week. I got so excited to run trails I haven't been on since last fall that I stupidly dove into the Greene Prairie with its super tall grass and mostly over grown paths and left itching like crazy. When I got home, I instantly jumped in the shower and scrubbed until those legs were clean.

But otherwise, a pretty great day of running at the Arb. The AK vest took some getting used to. I suspect I should have gone down to the S/M size, as all the straps on my M/L were pretty close to as tight as they'd go. For anyone interested in the vest, I'm like a 5'10", 155-160 lb. guy. But then I came across a huge group of runners running opposite of me. I was very surprised to see so many, but I think it was some training group. But they all looked like they were hurting and not enjoying much of their runs, which seemed scandalous on such a lovely day. I tried giving them some smiles and waves, but they were pretty much not having it. Started my bike ride to the Arb with blood sugar ~150 and ate a 14 g carb nut bar; had a GU during the run, and then finished my bike ride back home with blood sugar of 72 and a bowl of cheerios. Boom.

Friday - Monday - Off
Wedding planning, family time, and lot of thunderstorms ended up taking time out of running this weekend. Fortunately the training schedule was for an easy weekend, so it hopefully hasn't done too much damage. I'm considering it as a time off due to illness and know these minor breaks haven't negatively affected me in the past. Regardless, I've got a 50 mile week starting tomorrow and a softball game tonight.

View from inside the Greene Prairie looking onto the Grady Oak Savanna

A sweet painted turtle maybe the size of a foot

The carnival aspect of this video is pretty summer feels.