Week 7 Day 3

The weather was a windless, cloudy 68° and having gone into work early, I left early to close out my exercise week with another outdoor run.  My confidence was still through the roof.  In fact, I bought my Level 7 bling on the way home.  I suited up and made my way to the trail's beginning, kicking little sticks out of the way as I went.  Don't want to get a little roller under the foot and do a banana-peel trick!

I made it to the basketball court (.47 miles) at 5:45, which is 30 seconds faster than Monday (and implies a 12:47 pace or 4.7 mph.).  After the court, I passed a couple of basketball dweebs.  We exchanged hellos and I heard a bit of laughter afterwards.  A couple of minutes later I found out why.  They had placed a big, broken branch on the bridge.  I jumped it in three places to get through, and I didn't lose a beat.  On my second pass, two nice ladies walking a dog held the branch out of the way as I passed and lifted it off the bridge afterwards.  The dweebs were shooting baskets on the court.  As I approached, a rather bad shot attempt thudded off the rim and went bouncing down the catastrophically steep hill off to the side.  They were beating each other up verbally, to determine if the ball's owner or the guilty party would have to attempt the retrieval. As I ran the perimeter of the court I was thinking "How's that karma tastin'?"

Anyways, I did two out-n-backs and a little extra by 25 minutes.  At that point, I kind of felt like stopping, but then I thought "What the heck, I'll do a little more".  I kept going to just past the bridge where I had finished on Monday.  So I ran 2.14 miles again, and this time in 27:35.  I really poured it on the last 30-40 seconds.  Like last time, I could have kept going but I didn't really have that runner's high.  (I'm thinking that's what I encountered for the first time in my life on Monday.)  The only physical twinge I had was my right index toe, something felt painful near the beginning of the run in the bottom, middle part of it.  Not sure if it was the knuckle just off the main part of the foot or in the meat between knuckles, but within a couple of minutes it was beaten into submission and it feels just fine now.

In summary, 2.14 miles in 27:35 which is a 12:53 pace or 4.65 mph with no stopping.  I think these past two workouts compensate for my W7D1 outing where I had started out too fast - I will be moving on!