mix it up saturday morning run...

Saturday morning:

As usual on Saturday morning K and I headed down to the lakefront to get in the last mid-long distance run for the week. She was scheduled to run 8 with her group as their all on the tapering cycle towards the Pig Marathon on May 3rd. On my half marathon training I had a two hour endurance run scheduled but had run these the last three Saturdays and with the help of fellow V-teamers whom answered my question about what I should do as a replacement run. I choose to run a slightly modified version of the FIRST half program of 8 miles at PHMP + 20sec after an initial warm-up mile.

The weather was key here this morning thought as our temps were already at 76 degrees at our 8am start time with high humidity as storm fronts were rolling into our region. The winds were quite strong with a constant 20mph out of the SSW with occasional gusts at 30plus...a character building run for sure!As I headed southward on the lake front path at a warm-up pace against the wind my Garmin alerted me my mile warm-up was over and time to p/u the speed on the run. I focused as best as possible to mantain speed as my body was listening to my requests from it even with the winds in the face. Once I hit my turn-around point at mile 4.5 I took some EFS gel & drink along with a electrolyte tab as I was working up a sweat pretty good in the humidity. On the return trip north I stayed pretty consistant but struggled in a few areas as I used alot of energy earlier running into the wind at pace. The winds were swirling off the big buildings so there really near was a proper tailwind. The warmth & humidity was starting to get to me even with the brief 3 minute cooling rain shower.

I pushed as best as I could till my ending point near our car at nine miles and finished the run in 1:10:45 for a total average pace of 7:51 as my average HR was at 143bpm plus a max in a couple zones of 155bpm. Below are my segment distances, times and pace:

1 mile - 8:06
3.5 miles - 26:44 - 7:42
4.5 miles - 35.55 - 7:59

After I completed the run I felt confident and good even though I was never really near my 7:40 running pace required for the day. But the winds & humidity are good preparation for what I might see at Indy next Saturday :-)

After K and her group finished we all celebrated our training cycle completion with champagne & OJ, strawberries, brownies and very other goodies...then we went to Schuba's for a proper breakfast ;-)

b