Town Lake was running high and fast when I got down there this evening for my run. There were four flood gates open upstream, which was really causing some pretty impressive current on what is normally a quiet little recreational lake. As I was doing my pre-run warm-up, I asked someone who was just finishing his run about the trail: he said that there were a couple of places where it was closed, but that there were alternate trail routes to run on. Of course, by the time I got there it was pretty much dark, so that made me think for a minute about what I wanted to do.

Starting at South 1st, I ran out to the Pfluger bridge, across, over to Congress Ave, and back - a 2.3 mile loop in 20:43. I was running at a decent rate, not race pace but harder than I normally would on a slow day since I didn’t get my speedwork in yesterday. Since I was figuring on getting about five miles, I decided to just do another loop and possibly follow it up with a short one-miler. Once I got over the Pfluger bridge again though I decided that I really wanted to see what the lake was doing, so I went left instead of right and headed over towards MoPac.

Things were fine - dark, but fine - for about 3/4 of a mile, then I came across my first big road closed barricade. I actually had to feel my way over the grass and through the trees to get to the road: if there was an alternate route I didn’t see it in the dark. The next half mile of trail was completely submerged; the few times I could see into the tree cover the water was coming up way past the path. Once I got to MoPac though things were easier, and I had over a mile of dark, slippery trail to run on before the next detour.

This slowed me down quite a bit. I had to climb up the railroad tie steps in full dark and make my way alongside the park railroad for 1/4 mile to get back on track. A lot of that was done at a walk because I didn’t want to twist an ankle or get a tree branch in the eye. Once back on the trail I figured that I was fine, but alas there was only another 1/2 mile before I got ejected again. This time was better, I ran through a parking lot up to Lamar where I had to wait about a minute for the light to change - getting the time off my GPS, I didn’t stop the timer during the run.

Once the light at Lamar changed for me, I took off. The next 1/4 mile was on dirt trail, but it was pretty well lit and I averaged a 6:10 pace, which is quite fast for me. I slowed it back down a little after that because I only had another 1/4 before I was back to my car. Have I mentioned yet that I really love the fact that 9:30 has become my recovery pace? No? Well, I do. Compared to where I was last year, this is great.

Anyway, the final total was 6.75 miles in 1:02:36 for a 9:13 average pace. Since that includes a lot of walking, careful running in the dark, and one wait at a stop light, I’m pretty happy. I don’t feel terribly tired afterwards (although I was pretty hungry), and I got to work some good speed in when it was clear and bright - call it a mild fartlek run. It was further than I’d meant to go, but it never felt like I was ready for the run to end so that’s alright.

Tomorrow I have my evening spin class, and on Sunday I have my hilly half marathon. The schedule has me down for 10 on Saturday, but I’ll probably cut that down to more like 4-5 easy.

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