Week 3

Mon 7/29 – 5.1 mi / 46 min
A cool (75F), dark after school run. Felt very good, especially after a +10 hr Monday in the effing lab…and the 11 miler with friends on Saturday…and the delinquent behavior fantastic family BBQ that ensued on Saturday night. The cooler temp made such a difference but this was in fact partially offset by the damn dark (more on this later, stay tuned). I’d also like to think that I’m actually kind of getting into the grove of running again. I’ve had a few of these delightful surprised lately where I feel like I kind of know what I’m doing. 🙂 I hope it continues, at least for a while.
Now, back to the damn dark NJ streets. It is unbelievable how somewhere that is seemingly made up entirely of sprawling suburbia doesn’t see the need to install street laps along sidewalks, running trials, etc… Am I actually in Detroit where we actually can’t afford street lights, light bulbs or the electricity to power them even if we had them? Let me give you a hint…NO we re not!!! While I try to wrap my head around the situation, I have to go buy a new headlamp (mine started out as a cheap little find at Target, and ended as one of the few casualties of the move) and whatever other goodies I can come up with 🙂 My one and only blinks light is awesome (thanks Andi) but I need more than that out here. Check back for the debriefing of Operation: luminance Dr. Trot

Tues 7/30 – 4 mi / 38 min

77F and 56% humidity felt great. The run was good, especially considering

1. It was at the end of a 12 hr lab day
2. Yesterday’s late and quick run
3. The entire bag of popcorn I inhaled approximately 5 min before I went out
4. My general laziness
5. The ~0.75 mi hill at the very end (god has a sense of humor…not necessaraly one that I get, mind you…)

I survived my popcorn burps (TMI?) and the hill, I even passed two people 🙂 Again, I somehow managed to feel like running hard (relative definition) regardless of my overwhelming desire to curl up in David’s snuggy and watch endless Big Bang Theory up until I went out the door

Wed 7/31 – rest

If rest = 15 hr lab day (1 of 2 this week), then yeah, today was a rest day.  

Thurs 8/1 – rest

Fri 8/2 – 8.45 mi / 76 min

Awesome early run. It was cool and foggy and very Lord of the Rings to start with and then ended as the beginning of a beautiful warm sunny day. 70F and low humidity. I learned of some new little loops to include in my near-work runs and managed to hang on and run hard (again, relative definition please) through out.

Sat 8/3 – 5 mi / 46:25 min

So I drove down to DC on Friday night to visit my buddies Dr. Allison and Sir Jack.

Based on past experiences I was very excited for the visit but unconvinced that I was going to have good running. Once and for all, Saturday morning convinced me! I took off from Dr. A’s right out onto a trail that runs along the Potomac and followed that first up into a wooded area (in which I almost literally ran into a deer!) and then back just along the river in the opposite direction. The trail was great, the scenery was fun throughout and there was a nice volume of runners, walkers, bikers, dogs, babies, etc… to meet along the way.

cross – 10 mi bike / a while

In addition to my run, Dr.  A and I also put down a few miles on a bike ride along the trail to Mt. Vernon. This totally reaffirmed my new-found appreciation for DC and it’s catering to outdoor enthusiasts. We biked along the trail to Mt. Vernon down as far as Old Town Alexandria (which, P.S., is adorable). We got some sandwiches for lunch from a sweet little cafe in the downtown, ate them by the marina and then biked back home (which seemed way shorter than the ride out; why is that always the case?!) The weather was still beautiful and there was plenty of trial for everyone without it feeling like you were off in the middle of nowhere.

Sun 8/4 – cross – 10 mi bike / a while

To wrap up my visit (and to try to counter act a fraction of the Ethiopian food and/or ice cream that I gorged myself on Saturday night) we went on another bike ride up to Lady Bird Johnson Park and back.

The trail was definitely not my favorite in this direction. The trail itself was still nice, there were just a shitload of runners, walkers, baby strollers, dogs, rollerbladers and uni-cyclists. Ok, maybe not so many of that last one, but you get the point. It was still very nice to get out and get the legs turning over though. After the last few days of running and running + biking, they were pretty tight waking up.

Total mileage = 22.6 mi

So this week was the first cut-back week (less of a long run scheduled for Sunday) but the long run got pushed back to Monday so those miles were lost entirely, making it more cut back than I would have preferred. Of course the trip to DC was well worth it, a weekend with friends and +20 miles of biking is always a good weekend and the trotting miles will still get done eventually.

Threads – running, skirts, shorty socks and Mizunos (Wave Creation 11s for the trails AND the Wave Elixer 6s) for the roads