Tuesdays…the busy day of the week.

It is also the day that has historically been my “go faster” day and even with the pandemic and stay-at-home orders in effect, I am attempting to run into the comfortably hard effort range more often as the back of my left leg continues to slowly improve.

So I put on my Razor 3s and decided to run towards Goodhue. I was not sure of how far I would go or how fast I would go, but I figured that if I ran in the Razor 3s at some point I would pick up the pace and get into the effort level that I wanted.

• 1.0 – 8:39 / I started out slow and into the wind tunnel and as I loosened up I picked up the pace to where I wanted to be. However, I know that with all the ruts, empty puddles that I had to really focus on where/how I was placing my feet until I got off the dirt road, which felt like it was slowing me down quite a bit, although it didn’t really.
• 2.0 – 8:32 / This is where I got to the comfortably hard level I was looking for and just held it there.
• 3.0 – 8:45 / Going uphill and against the wind slowed me down a little and this is section is always deceptive about how uphill it is.
• 4.0 – 8:29 / This is the section where the empty cornfield is and the wind was coming through here without a lot of obstruction right in my face. I got to Goodhue in 29:12, which is not super fast, but not too bad either and when I turned around that headwind, suddenly became a tailwind and I started to pick up the pace without a whole lot of extra effort
• 5.0 – 8:07 / When I got to 4.0 miles, this is the section of road that I do purposely pick up the pace to see how I and the shoes feel. Everything felt good, but with my left leg still a little too tight to open up the stride really well, I just kept it right below the threshold where some discomfort begins. Overall, I felt good but kept it conservative and a little harder than comfortably hard for a mile.
• 6.0 – 8:32 / I purposely slowed back down to the comfort hard level of effort did good on the little bump at the start of the dirt road coming back.
• 7.0 – 9:05 / The dirt road again and coming back up Stevens Hill slowed me down as usual, but I was almost able to break 9:00 by picking up the pace once I got back to the tar.

Overall I was very happy with the run, although I would have liked to have gotten rid of the extra 12 seconds. However, with the headwinds and not going hard the first half mile I can’t complain too much about anything with this run.

Distance: 7.01

Time: 1:00:11

Pace: 8:35

The Razor 3s did great for the first 5.5 miles, however, my right foot started to bother a little, not enough to slow me down. More a distraction, but it would have gotten worse the longer I had run. I am not sure if it was the socks. I have had issues with them before and noticed them from the start of the run just a little or if it was the Razor 3s. I will use different socks the next time I run in them.

A good run.

Unfortunately, the day wasn’t done yet, I had to mow the front part of the two properties along the road. Even though it snowed Saturday and was cold as all get out Sunday, the grass has still managed to grow enough that things were starting to look pretty scraggily out front.

Yeah, almost 33,000 steps later, made for a pretty tired guy tonight.