Same Time, Same Channel

Easy Run. 6 miles + 8 x 8 sec. hill sprints.

58°F, 63% humidity, wind 4-6 S.

I ran the 6 miles on autopilot this morning. About midway through I realized that I had forgot to turn auto lap back on after Saturday's progression run. I hadn't even looked at my Garmin to that point and so I decided not to look at it at all until I got near the end of the 6 miles and got ready to do the hill sprints. I ran those 6 miles pretty slowly, with an average pace of 9:53. That's slower than I've been doing my easy runs lately.

It was considerably darker when I got to the hill sprints than it was at that time of day as recently as three days ago, which is the last time I ran in the early morning. This is the first time I can remember doing hill sprints when it was dark enough that I had to use the light to see my Garmin. I ended up fiddling with the Garmin on the first hill sprint trying to get the light on and the display to the screen that shows lap time, and as a consequence, I was a little slow on the first hill sprint. The paces for my hill sprints were 8:12, 7:59, 7:57, 8:09, 7:27, 6:56, 7:15, 6:15.

I was supposed to go train my Army recruit friend this morning, but she called and cancelled. She also cancelled last Friday. So we should have had 3 training sessions by now, but we've only had one. If she keeps cancelling, she's not going to accomplish her goals. I've been doing the Shred on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the last few weeks, but I had decided to do the Shred with her and switch to doing the Shred to Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So after she called this morning to cancel, I went ahead and did the Shred myself. My daughter kind of did it with me. She wanted to use hand weights, but I had her hold two Wii remotes instead. Interestingly, my daughter has better form on push-ups than my Army recruit friend does.

I'm hanging out at home this morning instead of going in to work because my work computer is still out of commission. So since I have some extra time this morning, I did the yogatoday.com free routine after I got my daughter off to school. I also did it last night, so that makes 3 days in a row of yoga for me. I think I did a little better job with it today than I did last night, because I'm a little more familiar with the routine. I had a little trouble, though, because the video kept buffering and the audio got ahead of the video. I had to pause it and go back at one point.

Fartlek Run. 8 miles easy w/8 x 50 sec. @ 10K-3K pace. Average pace: 9:13.

58°F, 60% humidity, wind 6 SSE.

I did the County Line Road loop as I've done on Tuesdays for the last few weeks. I ran 5 miles easy (10:13, 9:38, 9:21, 9:15, 9:30) and then started the fartlek portion. Paces for the fartlek intervals were 6:52, 6:51, 7:22, 7:22, 7:15, 6:58, 6:51, 6:16. I'm not sure why I slowed down in the middle, but I intentionally picked it up on the last one.

One year ago today was the beginning of the first week that I ran 6 days/week. With a few exceptions for injury, travel, or racing, I've run 6 days/week every week since then.

Easy Run. Average pace: 9:15.

54°F, 81% humidity, winds calm.

I finally did an Easy Eight. I had to hurry a little bit because I was a few minutes late getting out the door.

On my run this morning I finally saw another runner with the headlamp. I've seen bicyclists with headlamps before, but never a runner (besides myself). There were two women running together and one of them had a headlamp on.

I did the Level 1 Shred with my Army recruit friend this morning. She seems to be backing off of the Army idea. I told her that I'm willing to keep working with her regardless of whether she joins the Army, but we'll see how long she puts up with me.

Yesterday morning as I left for work I encountered my friend Carly who was just finishing her run and who was getting ready to do hill sprints. I told her previously about hill sprints and encouraged her to add just one or two hill sprints to the end of one run a week. She lives on my street, so she can use the same hill that I use. I also talked to her last night and I don't know how many hill sprints she had done in the morning, but she said it was fun.

Threshold Run. 2 miles easy, 2 x 15 min. @ half-marathon pace/10K pace, w/2-min. active recovery, 2 miles easy. Average pace: 8:44.

52°F, 77% humidity, wind 6 S.

I think the intent of this workout is to run the first 15 min. interval at half-marathon pace and the second 15 min. interval at 10K pace. That didn't quite work out for me this morning. The first interval was mostly downhill with the wind at my back and it was too easy. I had to keep slowing myself down. I ran that interval at 8:08 pace. I turned a corner right as I started the 2nd interval and ran that interval mostly uphill and into the wind. Where I had had to slow myself down on the first interval, I had a hard time keeping the pace on this interval. Also, I only had a 2 minute rest in between intervals, whereas last time I did this workout I had a 5 min. rest. So I didn't hit the 7:45 I was shooting for on the second interval. Instead, I ran 8:04 pace, just barely faster than the first interval. In any case, I'm glad that workout is over.

I'm going to the Colorado Symphony with my friend Carly tonight. It will be fun but it will mean that I won't get to bed early. I have not been able to get to bed early all week.

Easy Run. Average pace 9:37.

51°F, 66% humidity, winds calm. It was a little chilly this morning. I might have to break out the long sleeves and gloves soon.

I got to bed late last night and didn't sleep really well. I'm tired. I got up on time this morning, but was late getting out the door to run because I had to iron some clothes for my husband first. When I got back from my run, I was stretching on my porch as is my habit, and I noticed that there were no lights on in the house. Usually, Thing 2 gets up while I'm running and turns on some lights and he's supposed to be ready for seminary by the time I get home from running. I figured (correctly) that he had overslept, so I went in and woke him up. He got ready quickly and I took him to Seminary. On the way to Seminary, I realized that Thing 3 should have been up by the time we left for Seminary but that he had also overslept. I woke him up when I got back from the Seminary drop-off and so now he's hurrying to get ready for school. Everybody's tired today.

My Army recruit friend, who shall hereafter be known as Cindy, called last night and called this morning's workout. I was going to do the Shred without her this morning, but I'm too tired and so I'm skipping it.

Good luck to everyone who's running TOU tomorrow! And שנה טובה to everyone who's celebrating Rosh Hashanah!

**Update** I was useless at work so I came home and took a nap. Now I need to get some work done.

AM - 58°F, 55% humidity, calm - 6 miles on the Highland Canal Trail with the Michelles. For a change, they kept going and I stopped after 6 instead of the other way around. My Garmin was dead and it was just an easy run anyway, so I don't have a time or splits or pace.

Noon - 72°F, 47% humdity, calm - 2 miles warm-up and then the HRCA Oktoberfest 5K. I know that 72 degrees is cool to Bonnie, but I've been running in relatively cool early morning weather all summer, and particularly the last month or so. This was tough for me. I went out too fast and it was a very hilly course, as these HRCA races always are. It was downhill for the first half mile, then up hill for a mile to roughly the midpoint of the course, then downhill for about a half mile, a steep uphill for another half mile, then a steep downhill for a little more than a quarter mile, then uphill to the end (the reverse of the start). I lined up pretty near the front and there were a bunch of little girls in front of me. I nearly tripped over one of them who wasn't quite so little right at the start. Incidentally, the overall female winner was a 10-year-old girl. She looked like she maybe weighed 80 pounds soaking wet. I went out too fast and lost time each mile. My splits were 7:12, 7:41, 7:54, with the last bit at 8:02. They tack a 100 meter dash on the end of this race and time it separately. I gave the 5K all I had and didn't feel like doing the 100 meter dash, so as soon as I crossed the finish line for the 5K, which was the starting line for the 100 meter dash, I started walking and walked the whole 100 meters. I hate 5Ks. They're too fast and too painful. Well, I guess it was a PR by 10 seconds. I'd like to find a flat 5K to run some day. I'll have to go away from home for that.

My husband, oldest son, and daughter watched the race. My daughter gave me some advice before the race. It was to keep my arms and legs moving. She also made a poster that she held up to cheer me on at the finish line.

Now I've got to check out how you all did at TOU.