Sunday, July 5, 2015

A Week of Heat

The past week was not a great one for running. The highs for Monday through Wednesday ranged between 105 and 110, and it did not cool off much in the evening. I ended up taking the dogs out for walks around 9:30 to let the sun go fully down and let the temperatures go down a little, but doing so eliminated any time for a run unless I pretty much wanted to have to go straight to bed afterwards. As such, I didn't get in any midweek runs this week.

Since I was unable to run during the week and I had Friday off as a holiday from work, I chose to do my long run for the week on Friday. It was overcast when I headed out, and my first four miles went well. But sure enough, just as I was starting the uphill portion of the run, the clouds broken up, and I got to do the hard part of the run in the direct sun. I think the big change in situation had an impact on my pace, and I lost ~15 seconds per mile. It became obvious to me after a few more miles that I would not do as well as last week, so I decided that I would have to run for an extra 5 minutes this week. In the end, I ran for 95 minutes and covered 10.25 miles. I think moving forward if I'm in the situation where I can't beat my pace from the previous week that I'll need to run an extra 5 minutes.

This week I hope to get back to two weekday runs along with my long weekend run. The forecast currently looks like it will cooperate. Hopefully running on Friday instead of Saturday will give my legs some extra rest for the week.

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