Good morning!

I ran 12 slow miles in hot and humid air.  It felt just like July .

Have a great day!

I have 6 tonight. There is no internet in the office so we are just sitting here unable to work.

I have 6 tonight. There is no internet in the office so we are just sitting here unable to work.

Shouldn't you be house hunting?

 Wouldn't you need a cell phone for that?

I don't know about you but I don't leave home without mine.

A well deserved RD for me... maybe.... I definitely didn't get up this morning to do anything, though the child woke up at like 4 AM and from that point on I got like no real sleep 

Yo. I'll run something easy later on.

I ran my town's annual 5 miler yesterday because it is just a few miles down the street from my house and fairly cheap, in the spirit of "race more and have less anxiety about it, dummy". Unfortunately it was only HOT during the ~ hour or so that I was out warming up and then racing, but it was good anyway!

A mini race report, skip if you don't feel like reading!

Went out a little quick - my watch read 6:40ish pace after the first 1/4-1/3 mile, which is probably about where I should be for a 5 miler and it didn't feel BAD, but the sun was beating down and without much shade in the first mile, I settled in and dialed it back a bit. At this point I was fifth F and didn't expect I would shift position much; number 1 was waaaaay out ahead and looked quite strong. "Run your own race. You don't have to go to the well. Just put in a good workout." Hung with a local friend for a bit here. Through mile 1 in 6:59.59 and Strava's gonna round up to 7, tragic. Run faster next time I guess.

The race runs along one side of the lake and then continues on a road where for some fucking reason my watch NEVER gets a normal read on pace. The graphs from this part are hilarious - it looks like I am somehow, at a very consistent heart rate, oscillating between 6:00 pace and >8:00 pace for this section. I know these roads very well though, and just check in occasionally to see where I am in terms of pace/total time. Keep effort steady - that just-barely-sub-7 only happened because I went out fast, so keep pushing to stay in the low 7s. I pass a couple of kids who went out too hard. Gentle uphill for the second half of mile 2 and I'm through in 7:14.

Sharp right turn and a short/steep downhill on a rough patch of road - dodge potholes, don't hammer too hard (not worth stressing the hip), just try to bank some effort while keeping pace consistent. Lots of shade up ahead on this stretch of road. Run the tangents through an S curve, just be patient. Up the only other notable hill and through mile 3 in 7:17, fuck. It's ok. I'm so hot. UGH. Just two miles left now, open it up a tiny bit. 4th F up ahead has been fading pretty steadily - I pass her somewhere in here. 3rd F is in sight way out ahead but I can see from here that she's slowly losing steam too.

At 3.5 we turn right onto a road that was just repaved last year - the asphalt holds onto heat like crazy, there's a noticeable temperature shift stepping out onto it. Oof. Awful. Only like 11 minutes left at this point if my math is correct so I am OK with suffering. I start picking people off here to take my mind off of how fucking hot it is - they're mostly coming back to me. Up a teeny tiny hill nice and steady, I'm through mile 4 (7:08) and then past 3rd F on the downhill. I hit the mile 4 marker at 28:30 so I know a PR is off the table at this point but a strong finish is still an option. I pick off a couple more dudes, 1st and 2nd F have been out of sight for a while so it's just holding onto 3rd. Try to pass one guy and he goes with me - perfect, someone to work with! I hear a couple of people cheering a girl's name too close for comfort behind me and I don't know if she has gas left in the tank or not, but I know that I do so I gradually start turning it up.

There are two more guys up ahead and we start to close the gap on them. I tell my new pal that we're definitely picking off the first guy, he says he wants to catch the other guy too because it's his friend. Picking up steam, the final turn is up ahead and there's less than a quarter mile to go. We pass guy #1, I drop my buddy and set my sights on the last guy on the final stretch to the finish but I don't quite have it in me today - I cross the line a second behind him (and it turns out I knew him too, lol, just didn't recognize him in my late-race haze until after we crossed the line). 6:41 for the last full mile and a few more seconds for the last couple hundredths of a mile on my watch - 35:28.8 (gun time, no chip time), good for 10th overall and 3rd F.

Not a 5 mile PR (which is from two-thousand-fucking-sixteen at this point, I am due for one!), but a course PR by 2:21 at the same effort level on a similar day heat-wise (178 bpm avg heart rate this year, 180 when I last ran it in 2017) so that's neat. Yay summer! Yay racing!

So I tested out the hammy on the treadmill this morning, in case a quick abort was needed. Felt pretty tight, but did not develop into the kind of pain I had last week, and go through 2 very slow miles. So, that's something. Will try to keep at it, and baby it for a while.

Encouraging

Lauren - in this heat that's a fantastic effort, especially to be able to pick up the pace and pass so many runners.