I missed out on the Central Maine Strider’s noon Group run today – another vehicle repair appointment, I was disappointed, but I am definitely making next weeks – at least that is the plan.
More adventures in vehicle maintenance at ACAR – it seems that I am spending waaaayyyy too much time there and I had yet another appointment this morning. So I drove into Augusta and when I went through the circle – it said 35F degrees and this was just before 9:00 AM. Then when I started my run, instead of doing the waiting room wait, there was also a nice little breeze in my face all the way out towards Gardiner, but at least it was at my back coming back.
Yep – it sucked!
I was wearing shorts, but I had an extra layer on top, that I had planned to leave in the truck – I didn’t. My hands and ears were barking at me pretty good, by the time I got out of Hallowell.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am really ready for some warmer temps. This needing tights, winter hat, gloves and multiple layers sucks, especially for the last day of April.
Enough whining about how cold I was – just deal with it Harold!
How was the run?
My plan was to do some 1/2 mile fartleks, once I got past the first mile. Unfortunately, when I started to pick it up on that first one, I started to feel some tightness in my left hamstring. It was telling me it was too damn cold to be doing speed work outside, especially anything fast. Based on that, I quickly backed off to the point where it didn’t bother too much.
The tightness was still there, but it didn’t really didn’t bother my running as long as I didn’t try to push really hard. Every time I started to pick up the pace, my hamstring quickly reminded me it wasn’t really a good idea.
Based on how my hamstring was barking at me, I decided to do more of a steady state run and wanted to keep it under a 8:00 minute pace.
My body is still on half marathon training pace, which meant that I was just working comfortably hard and could have kept going at this pace for a while longer.
This is fine and good, but at the same time I was planning to do a faster-paced workout (sub 7:00 for the fast portions) and was bummed that I couldn’t do it without running into more problems than I wanted to deal with and would not have proved anything.
Newton Energy’s
They did fine, but they are definitely just a little too narrow, but they were the fastest shoe I owned for the run earlier today. They would work better than my other choices for a fast 5K to 10K. However, they are not put them on and forget about them shoes when I run outside.
The good news is that I finally got in the Brooks Green Silence that I found on eBay for under $24.00. After some experimentation, I changed out the laces and insole, now I really like how they felt while walking in them tonight. I didn’t want to aggravate the hamstring by going out for another run today, so it might be a couple of days before I actually run in them. However, my first impressions were pretty favorable – more to come on them, when I actually get a run in.
Overall, at this point, a 6+ mile training run at under an 8:00 minute pace has to be considered a really good run. Especially since I haven’t been doing that kind of pacing outside very often by myself and how my hamstring was letting me know that running any faster would result in some serious barking and possible down time.
Oh yeah – the truck needs new shocks in the rear and probably new brake pads – the joys of vehicle ownership.
Harold's Blog 