Lake Michigan at Sunrise

Lake Michigan at Sunrise

Friday, August 2, 2013

Frantically Fresh Friday

I went to bed last night feeling a little curious as to how my legs would feel today. During my rest day, my legs get a breather and are able to tell me how much of a jerk I am to them, and feel a few extra aches.  My hammies were a bit tight yesterday, due to the hill work, and I thought that might linger into my run today and would have to just do an easy run.

Wake up at 4am today. No tightness in the hammies, yay! Drank my coffee. 4:20, I feel kinda ready to leave. But after that fiasco with running trots a couple weeks ago, I waited. There was that light feeling that if I wasn't going to run, would be nothing. But knowing that 30 minutes is the safe zone for coffee, I walked around for 10 minutes and history taught me well.

When I woke up my wife also warned me that she thinks it was raining. Check weather, storm just passed, another one on the way around 5-5:30. After the last time I got caught running in a downpour and fried my phone, Jennifer recommended to have a ziplock baggy on hand to throw your phone into. So this I did, and my new armband is supposed to be waterproof. (Spoiler, the bag and the phone were both dry at the end of the run).

4:40am, step outside, start stopwatch, and go. GPS was searching for signal, so I would give it until I reach the start of the Lakefront path before I decide to give up on it. It picked up at that point thankfully. Today's plan called for 7 miles at marathon pace.

Last Friday my first pace mile was all wonky, be it need for a longer warm up or GPS signal error. After a recommending from Lindsay that a longer warm up has helped her, I decided to try it out today. I'm glad I did as my calves were a bit tight, so the long warm up helped them. I did a 2.4 mile warm up and then went at it. Right when my phone told me the distance marker, I pulled in for a dorky line from 300 to try to spark some adrenaline. And then the rain started, and the thunder, and lightening.

The initial deluge felt something like this:

I thought about turning around, but remembering what the radar looked like, the storm cells were small and moving fast. The storm would end by the time I got home. The next common sense option would be to get to some better cover. Yea, I was hitting my pace, and common sense didn't make it into my thoughts. The rain gave me a surge of energy to feel more like this:

I obviously have the common sense of a anime character.

Now for the run pace stuff:
The first .4 miles weren't recorded, but it was done at warm up pace. Marathon pace started at mile 3. My times were about 10 seconds or so too fast on average. Mile 6 was were I turned around. Miles 8-9, I couldn't hear my phone over the sound of cars driving on a wet Lake Shore Drive. I was just running by feel. I wasn't raining for a bit now, so I took out my phone for a moment to check to see if it was even working, I was about to hit 9 and move into cool down. I heard my pace and said woops. I'm not sure if I'm just pushing too hard or what. This is close to a strength run. I'll try to slow down more next week.

The benefit of running in the rain, the gnats were washed out. But I swear they are related to the Phoenix, since once the rain ended, they were back and hungry for suicide. Their grave, my neck.

And since there weren't any photo worthy skies while it was dry, here is a complimentary pic of my tot from the other evening:


Happy Friday Everyone!


Edit: I forgot to reference my title in my post. Storms were like a free shower. You get fresh in a frantic pace. Get it?

9 comments:

  1. Nice rain run! What is your ideal marathon pace? Around 7:00? We always go too fast don't we?!?

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  2. Great job with your splits in the rain! Have YOU thought about decreasing your MP since you're consistently faster during tempo runs? I'm glad the longer warm up helped, that extra mile is perfect when you wake up a little stiff or tight.



    I got soaked today too although I wasn't out for nearly as long as you. My fingers are crossed that my shoes dry out before tomorrow morning!

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  3. I am scared to honestly. As a newbie, I am still learning my abilities at this point. Issue is, mid to long runs, I run so much stronger and on pace or faster. But I don't have the best burst speed for sub 1600m intervals that matches my mid/long run paces. I imagine once we get the 8-10 MP pace days, I'll see if i can sustain the sub 7s. I notice mile 7-8 is where my long run days require me to dig in a little bit.
    But it is on the table to increase my MP time if I find this keeps happening!


    My sneakers have newspaper in them as we speak, May have to use my backups tomorrow for the easy 10!

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  4. Nice work. I had exactly the same gnat experience this morning (and thought of you) - not one to be seen, storm hit, storm stopped and they were EVERYWHERE. Luckily it randomly poured on and off for the rest of my run so even though I was very wet I only suffered one gnat swallowing incident.

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  5. My dream pace is around 7:03-4, BQ dream.I imagine I'll be between that and 7:10

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  6. ChristopolisTiberiusAugust 2, 2013 at 6:13 PM

    I love that extra push into Super Saiyan that a little hard rain tends to give. Then you get home and look at your split times and think, "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE! There's NO WAY that can be right!" ;)

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  7. Thanks!! Enjoy your long weekend!

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  8. Glad there is someone else that can appreciate some DBZ here! And that's not even my final form

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