Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Five Miles At Dark O'Clock

I guess I better just get used to this as it's not going to get much better over the next few months: when I left this morning for my run - a little before 6am - it was still dark outside. My new training partners are Venus and Orion. Deal with it.

Since Sherry leaves to drive carpool by 7:15am most mornings, if I want a morning run it needs to be early. As a result, I'll need to try to get to bed earlier - so no Monday Night Football last night (I did end up winning my fantasy football games in both leagues that I am in - so my only team that did not win this weekend was the Redskins...3-1 for the weekend is not bad).

This schedule will not be so bad for the 4 or 5 milers...but I'm wondering what I'm going to do for the 8 mile mid-week longer run. My calendar is starting to fill up this Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, so a long lunch-break run may not be in the cards. I may have to wake up at 4:30am to get 'er done...UGH!

This morning - 5.5 miles in 58:20; a 10:31/mile pace with average HR of 148. My muscles still felt a bit stiff and sore from Sunday's run, but still I was able to keep a nice pace and my heart rate below and average of 150 for the entire run. Of course I would hope for a lower HR on an easy run (the first 5 miles on Sunday I had an average HR of 140 and my pace per mile was only 11 seconds slower), but it still felt pretty good.

One other tidbit - my weight is now at the pre-Disney vacation level. This is still 3 pounds more than I ran last year's marathon at - and about 7-12 pounds more than my doctor wants me at. I'll definitely focus on losing those last pounds after the marathon. I really don't feel like counting calories while marathon training - my body is a furnace right now and I'll feed it when it needs it!

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