This morning walking with Bennie was slightly foggy and made for some interesting sights along the way. Below is the view from the top of Philbrick, attempting to look out over the river valley. The tree looked a bit ominous in the distance, then with the crows flying around cawing and cackling it was bit like one of those end of the world horror flicks. We were lucky though and no zombies or guys with chainsaws tried to chase us down.

Planned run and focus: 3-4 miles slow and focus on finishing the run and if anything was left in the tank 3-4 strides at the end.

The Run

Going out was slow, the humidity just felt worse than yesterday, even though the % was supposedly lower. Just before I got to Bartlett, I realized that I had zero chance of doing strides after running back up Stevens Hill, so in my infinite wisdom I turned left on Bartlett.

I figured that I could run to the top of Bartlett and see if I could steal back my segment from the “new” guy in the area who has been crushing my old Strava segments. Plus I like to check out my stoopidity and run hard on hot/humid days every once in a while.

Coming down the hill felt pretty good and if I was racing I could have turned it up a notch or maybe two. When I finished felt that I had done better than I usually did coming down the hill – maybe I was able to steal back my segment. Little did I know that the “new” guy had gone out this morning and simply crushed this segment. I thought I was doing big things before I saw his time, he blew away my effort by almost a minute.

Oh well, gotta smile and keep working harder, but getting the old body worked up to running this segment under a 5:40 pace is gonna be hard. It does give me something to work at though. 😉 Never say never, but that kind of pace, I think the body has forgotten how to run that fast. We will see.

The rest of the run was just a slog back to the house. No strides necessary, chasing the segment was substituted for them earlier, so that was good. I just stopped at the mailbox and did my 0.5 mile cool-down (yeah right) walk.

When I finished I had to wring out my shirt. Yeah, I sweat that much today, which surprised me since the temp and humidity were lower today than yesterday.

• Course: Bartlett TOH 4.0 Miler
• Weather: Partly Cloudy, 76°F, Feels like 77°F, Humidity 79%, Wind 4mph from SE. It might have been 76* when I started, but it sure as hell was hotter when I finished.
• Distance: 4.02
• Time: 37:16
• Pace: 9:15

Splits:

• 1.0 – 9:24
• 2.0 – 9:26
• 3.0 – 7:59
• 4.0 – 10:12

Shoes: New Balance Beacon v1 – The Beacons did everything they were supposed to do. Put them on, forget about them and just focus on my running. You know what you are supposed to do with your running shoes.

Anything else:

Yes, I remembered to put tape on the right ankle’s blister, so that was not a problem.

Even though I didn’t steal back my Strava segment, I was pretty happy with the effort that I had for the segment, next time I will start a bit further back and make sure that I run around the corner a little further, before slowing down. Always something I can do better to chase the segment more efficiently.