Saturday, March 29, 2014

Rainy Town Run

I wanted to get up and finish the week off with a BCR run.  However, I was in bed for about 2 hours before falling asleep.  Therefore, I was on my own later for this 6 miler.  I wanted to get to 50 miles for the week.

I decided to do something different.  I know it is 5 miles from my house to the high school.  I had my mom drive me there and drop me off to run home.  Then, I'd add another mile near my home.  It would make a nice downhill course.

I didn't know what to wear.  It was in the upper 40s, but cloudy and it began to drizzle at the start.  I went with a short sleeve shirt and shorts.  That was okay, but I would've been better off with some kind of rain gear.

When I looked at weather.com, it said expect occasional rain to begin at 1 PM.  So of course, we had a solid rain already by 11:15 AM.  It was coming down fairly steady throughout the run and it definitely made me a little uncomfortable. 

Coming out of the high school is a challenging uphill.  My legs weren't quite recovered from the faster runs of the last two days.  Thus, it was a struggle to climb.  Eventually the legs came around.  I ran that opening mile at an 8:08.

I really do enjoy running through town.  It's a nice, little town.  I remembered how much sidewalks bothered me earlier in the week, so I opted for the roads as much as possible.  Through the heart of town, I did use the sidewalks.

The pace did pick up again.  I ran mile 2 at 7:41.  There was some climbing in this part of the run.  I was starting to get very wet as time went on.

I knew this next mile would be awesome.  It is a pretty good drop coming out of town and running toward Gracedale.  I cruised along and ran it at a 7:08.  Other than the rain coming down, I was comfortable.  I did wish I had a hat on to keep the rain away from my eyes.  I started to develop a little chafing problem too.  I was glad that I was only running 6 miles.

After leaving town, I was now getting closer to home.  Mile 4 was more flat than mile 3 and I ran a solid 7:15.  This road has a decent shoulder, but it was kind of busy on a late Saturday morning.  I watched my overall pace drop and drop.

As I was nearing my house, I thought about adding miles.  There is an industrial park nearby.  I ran into that and did a short out and back.  At times, I had a decent headwind in my face.  That made some of this run tough.  This mile was another solid 7:16. 

I headed back home.  I was so glad to get into my neighborhood.  I came to my house with a quarter of a mile to go.  I ran a short out and back up the one street.  The final mile was a 7:13.  Despite the rain, it was a nice run to end the week.

I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow.  Mertz is doing a long run and earlier in the week, I was talking about joining him.  I'm not sure if I'm up for a faster pace or not.  I'm also unsure about what the weather will be like.  There is supposed to be a lot of rain this weekend.  I would like to run 17 or 18 miles, I think.  Maybe I'd do less if they were run at a faster pace.

6 miles - 44:42 (7:27 pace)

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