I didn’t even realize it, but I must have been tired this morning. Possibly I was still a little drained from Saturday’s 17 miler (which I’ve now properly blogged, if you just saw the teaser earlier). Anyway, when I got to the workout this morning Gilbert told me that he was taking most of the group to do more circuits becuase they were “weak,” but that I was doing pretty well. Cool! Then he told me that I was tired, and that I should do the seven mile loop - five easy, two hard.

Alright, so I guess I looked tired. I felt fine - a little congested from allergies, but pretty decent anyway - then I looked down at my ForeRunner to make sure it was sync’d properly before heading out. My heart rate was up over 100, more than 20 bpm higher than it should have been before a workout! I know that’s one of the take-it-easy signs, and that was indeed my plan.

Kenny showed up a little late, and was going to run over to join the workout group at AHS until he realized that I was planning on running by myself, at which point he decided to do the seven mile loop instead to keep me company. Normally this would be a good thing, and indeed I took advantage of the opportunity to chat and picked up a lot of good advice, but Kenny’s easy pace is, shall we say, a wee bit faster than mine. I would rein it in every mile or two, but we kept on accelerating gently without even realizing it, especially as I was trying to focus on form suggestions.

Actually, that’s better than I thought I was doing, especially the last couple of miles. Also, I stopped in mile one to retie my shoes, Kenny stopped in mile three to remove a rock, and I stopped in mile five to get several cups of water under the MoPac bridge. The weather outside was beautiful, with mist rising from the lake like some bad fantasy movie, but felt awful (78 degrees, 95% humidity). It was worth it to see the lake from the MoPac footbridge covered in mist with a lone kayaker pushing his way out though - way cool.

In the final mile Kenny tried to get me to pick it up even more - I actually had no idea that I’d just done a 7:30 mile six - but I was feeling mighty lousy. It almost felt like I was dehydrated, cold and shivery, although I don’t think that should have been the case. Still, I really appreciated his effort and I’m pretty content with my performance, compared to the way I felt. When I realized that I’d taken over an hour to do the loop I was pretty downhearted, but looking back on it that time didn’t tell the whole story (and I hadn’t bothered to check out my individual laps until now).

I got some more water to drink at the end, cooled off under the showerhead, and was just about to head back to RunTex when Kenny noticed me and suggested that we were ready for our strides now. Yeah, alright. I did five 100M acceleration strides on the grass, then headed back for some light streatching before making my way into the office (via the gym for a quick, and needed, shower).

This is one time when MB helped me out - being able to see just how nasty the weather was made me feel quite a bit better about my performance. After all, what’s the point of wearing all these little gadgets if we don’t follow up on the information? And hey, the seven mile loop has 400′ each of rise and fall. Who knew?

Running tip of the day, courtesy of Kenny, “If you want to run fast, run fast.” In other words, when it comes time to work on increased turnover, just do everything you have been doing, with the same form, but more of it!

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