The Weather is Here....I Wish You Were Beautiful

I just wanted to use that as a title. The REAL title for this post is:

THE WEATHER IS FINE, MY RUNNING IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!

It's cooled off here in Chicagoland, and I'm biking just a bit less than I had been, so I've amped up/ramped up my running, since I'm doing another marathon in, well pretty much 3 months. I'm back on running 5 times per week or more. Next week, I'm running EVERY DAY, including 3 brick workouts, and I'm pretty pumped for that, and will get in about 40 miles. That will be my run peak prior to MiamiMan, and then I'm sure I'll have another one in mid-December in preparation for Goofy Challenge.

I'm really enjoying running in the cooler weather, and as it gets slightly cooler, I'm running the same routes in less time. But there's something new going on, too. I figure I've bottomed out on my lean-i-tude, but lately when I'm running, I just feel incredibly light on my feet. Lighter than ever before. To the point where even if I'm tired, I'm knocking out a good (for me) pace.

I've figured out a way to be able to run on the roads frequently without getting injured. It's taken a few years to figure this out for myself, but now I've got a system that works. And there's some fairly challenging hills about 2 miles from home, so it makes me strong-like-bull to run them frequently. All good!

Yesterday I only had to run 50', including a stop for 10' of strides. About 3/4 mile from home I spotted a multi-colored, psychedelic-looking soccer ball (I tried to post a pic of it but Blogger is not cooperating--it's a Baden 140) looking all lonesome against the curb. I didn't see anyone looking for it, so I decided to let it keep me company for the way back. I never was a soccer player, but I had so much fun kicking the thing and keeping it straight and catching up to it. It was a good proprioception session, and I know I was smiling or laughing the whole way back. When I reached my street, which has about 1/4 mile downhill, I was wondering if I could keep up with the ball. I didn't kick it so hard, so I did, and some landscape workers got a "kick" out of watching me. I told them I had my own personal soccer game! The ball only slowed me down by maybe 30" for the last mile, but I didn't care, I had so much fun!

Today, I did my long run, since Sunday is supposed to be in the 70's, which will be better for riding. I had 1:50 to do, and I headed to my hilly trail area, Waterfall Glen. Since I've stopped using the HRM, I have to feel my pace, and I guess I was thinking of 9:30 miles today, but when the first (long) mile was 9:30, I thought maybe I can go faster today. So I just tried to keep a nice, relatively aerobic pace, and it looked like I was on about 9:05-9:10 after 6 miles (I made up some time on downhills), so that was that, I had to maintain that speed. About 6 miles in, I encountered another runner that I figured was running 9:30's or 10's, and came up and said the usual hi, nice day, blah, blah, blah. I went ahead, and then he said some more to me and I had to slow down to hear him, so he said he'd catch up. And he did, and then we ran about 3.6 miles (the end of the loop) together. His name is Tom, and it was his THIRD LOOP! The loop here is about 9.6 miles. He'd already run almost 26 miles by the time I saw him. He was worried he was slowing me down, but I was fine, and he was grateful for me picking his pace up for the last part of his run. He's doing the Chicago marathon, and I asked why he was doing 30 miles, and he said, "Because it's such a beautiful day." My kind of guy! I got his last name, and told him to run like the wind at Chicago, and predicted he will go 3:30 (his PR is 3:41, and I know based on how he was doing 30 miles he should have no issue going 3:30 as long as he tapers hard).

I stopped briefly to use the bathroom and then headed out for the last of my run. I felt STUPENDOUS! I basically kept my pace and almost miscalculated how much more I needed to run (I think a 20 miler would have been easy for me to do but stupid considering I need to ride 3.5 hours hard tomorrow). When all was said and done, guess what my average pace was? 9:08. 12.11 miles, not too shabby. I wasn't running hard! While Tom and I ran together, we were chatting like nobody's business, so I know I could have gone faster. My stomach felt off today, but no worries there, I just quit drinking. It's not like I'm going to die of dehydration from running 12 miles, right?

I even managed to swim 1500 yards afterwards to loosen myself up, and did a reasonable amount of stretching. I debated on doing the swim, but I know my legs needed the water massage (the water felt cool to me, thankfully) so I can hit a nasty, nasty bike workout tomorrow (of course followed by a run).

If I make all 7 days of running next week, I will have run 10 days straight. I think I've done that once before without ill effect. I keep thinking I'd like to buy a treadmill so I could run every day, even if it was just 15', but then I think I have enough trouble keeping up with my calorie needs, so maybe I'll wait on it. But as winter looms, I might reconsider, as just driving .6 miles to the Y to use their treadmills adds up.

Oh...and my bike strength remains solid so far. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Something tells me I'll just be thrilled that it's warm and summon up all sorts of watts!

If I can run this well next week, I will be very happy. I'm now tracking my average pace by the week and in aggregate for the season so I can look at how I'm doing on that front and have better data to support my pace work.