Day 160, 205 To Go

June 9, 2013

My expectations for today's run were mixed.  On the one hand, my long runs have been getting better.  On the other hand were a few glasses of beer and wine from Friday night. 

The alcohol won, I think.  I regressed a bit this week.  There are a few possible reasons.  Let's explore them:

1. It takes a couple of days to rehydrate, so drinking will have a detrimental affect on your running
2. Honey came with me on her rollerblades and I spent a lot of time stopping and starting to help her (more on that later)
3. It was really humid
4. I was just lazy and didn't try hard enough

 It could be any one of these things or all of them.  Let's start with the first one: drinking.

I am not a big drinker, but I did have fun.  So, even if this was the reason, I don't care.  Screw you.  I had a blast and I'd do it again!  Obviously, alcohol will have a detrimental affect on performance.  No news there.

The second reason: Honey.  She is always a good person to blame if something goes wrong.  She is my wife, after all.  We ventured outside our protected little gated community and took to the streets...or at least to the sidewalk near the streets.  The issue is that every couple hundred meters there was a break in the sidewalk for a street or driveway or an entrance into a fast food joint.  At each of these intersections, are these red plastic, matt-like things with circular bumps on them.  I have no idea what their use is.  Is it some sort of rumble strip to alert a blind person that they are approaching an intersection?  Are they there to look pretty, because they aren't.  Or are they there to torment rollerbladers?  I think it is the latter.

Honey needs to slow down when we approach these because when her wheels hit them, they kind of stop moving.  That can have a detrimental affect to someone wearing said wheels.  So, I slow down with her and help her across.  Then we pick up speed and stop again to go back up on the sidewalk and then we repeat this over and over again.  Perhaps if she were a more skilled rollerblader this wouldn't be an issue.  I don't know...in either case, it is probably a good idea to slow down rather than end up face first on the pavement.

So, all that stopping and starting over and over again slowed me down and tired me out.

Number three was certainly a factor.  I just don't know how much.  Once you approach 70% humidity, your performance starts to get worse.  I believe it averages 650% humidity on a normal day here in Florida, so as you can imagine, it was nasty.  The bonus to the high humidity is that I get to multi task when I run as I get a swim workout in at the same time.

Lastly, was I just lazy?  Probably a bit, but the fact that I ran for 62 minutes probably means I wasn't THAT lazy.

So, here are my numbers:

Time: 62:00

Distance: 6.68 miles

Pace: 9:17/m

Max Pace: 5:51/m

Calories: 849
Avg HR: 143

Max HR: 159

I ran 62 minutes because I went a little to far on the way out and I was at 60 minutes too far from home and I didn't want to walk.  The pace wasn't horrible, but I feel like I should have been under 9 and I wasn't.  Next week I should be back in the groove.  I have mapped out a slightly different route that will allow us to avoid many of the stops and starts and every week Honey gets better and stronger.  She often complains that her ass is on fire when she is rollerblading and I assume she means her butt muscles, not that she has diarrhea from eating too much spicy food.  At least I hope it isn' the latter because she is often in front of me when I am running and that could be rather unpleasant!!

Run for Life!!