After a no track Tuesday today was definitely a recovery runday.

While walking Bennie down-back the Town Crew were marking the road for some more fixing up (they have done a great job!) and as much as they have been down there and by the house lately we have been doing a little gabbing here and there. One of the guys asked me as we were walking by “Don’t you ever stay still?”

We all laughed because they see me walking Bennie 3-4 times a day, mowing the lawns, running, walking and doing yardwork and I just responded “I’ll have plenty of time for resting in the pine box”. We laughed again and I said “I sit too much at night”. The guy looked at me and laughed and said “I’d be asleep by 6:00 if I was half as active as you are!” We all chuckled again and I waved as Bennie I kept going for our long walk.

It did get me to thinking about how lucky and so thankful that I still can be this active in my 60s.

After Bennie’s long walk, I sat around for about 15 minutes and then I finally got motivated to get out the door for my run.

The Run

Planned run and focus: Nothing too fast or doing too much other than putting 4.0 miles on the legs, working on running tall and seeing what really is comfortable for running with my arms.

• Course: Bartlett / HC 4.0 Miler
• Weather: Sunny, 75*F, 47% Humidity, 6 mph S
• Distance: 4.10
• Time: 37:29
• Pace: 9:08

Splits:

• 1.0 – 9:05 / Started slow and just felt tight in the legs
• 2.0 – 9:07 / Started to loosen up a little and had some bounce to my step
• 3.0 – 9:39 / Even though I did slow down going up Stevens Hill, I maintained good form for the most part and when my mind wandered a couple of times, I could feel my form deteriorating and brought it back pretty quickly
• 4.0 – 8:54 / Feeling pretty strong and that bounce to my step got me to thinking about doing a faster last quarter. Just to see how the Beacon v1s handled a faster pace.
• 0.1 – 42.0 / I finished the last quarter in 1:44 which is only 0:02 seconds off my fastest time for my no-track quarter course. No issues with picking up the pace and felt like I had another gear I could have shifted to.

What did I do well?

Running comfortably for most of the run and then doing a good hard quarter at the end.

What do I need to work on?

Not letting myself getting sucked into doing that speed stuff on a recovery day. I have no one to blame but myself, which means that I can do better. Especially since I cannot blame it on somebody else. 😉

Shoes:

New Balance Beacon v1 – They did better than I thought they would on the road down-back, but I do have to be more judicious about where I plant my feet and look out for the bigger rocks. When I picked up the pace the Beacons felt smooth and comfortable, they let me run the single quarter a lot faster than I usually do most of the quarters on my no-track Tuesday workouts.

What was I thinking?

Mainly I focused on attempting to maintain good running form and sort of paid attention to how my feet were landing. It seemed as though I might have been landing a little more forward than usual – not too sure, but maybe.

I did learn when running slower, I can do the lower hands and keep the arms at 90 degrees pretty easily, while ensuring that I push them more backwards than forward. However as soon as I got up to 5K race pace I noticed that my arm swing definitely changes to become more compact with the hands held up higher towards the chest.

Sometimes I really believe that running form (for me at least), changes according to the paces I am running. I have one style of running that works pretty well at slower paces and a much more efficient and compact style at faster for me speeds.

I tend to think we all do, but who am I to counter the experts who have studied all this to much greater detail than I ever will. I have a feeling that I will focus on good general running practices of form or efficiency and then let the body deal with the minor tweaks that are part of the old body’s way of running versus attempting this or gotta do that by certain methods or authors.

A good run and another day of learning more about myself and running in general.