23 December 2014

Today was a cool and breezy day, a good day for running. The ambient temperature was about 55F for the entire run; I don’t really know what the wind speed might have been but, I’m guessing, it was in excess of 12 mph. The wind caused me to feel cool (chilly) until near the end of Mile-3 of the training run, when I started sweating and feeling warm; and, that’s about when I really started to enjoy the run; i.e., just running.

Unlike yesterday’s run, today’s run felt good, right from the beginning of my WU. I didn’t look at my Garmin 620 during the run, except to acknowledge each mile ticking by. As usual, though, running up the steep hill, at the beginning of my training run, required a lot of effort and was very difficult to maintain my cadence and training pace up that hill; but, today, I did maintain close to the cadence that I try to run, 180 spm; I only dropped to 176 spm on the way up–never mind my pace!

Endurance Running – Week 6 of 13 Weeks, Day 2 of 4 Days

Today’s training run was scheduled for 5 miles; so, with my one mile WU, my KD was two miles: 8 miles, total. I could have shortened the KD by taking only two laps around the loop of Wild Turkey Run [the name of the street], rather than three; but, I just felt so good running and was really enjoying the time outdoors.

While I cannot say that I like the steep hills at the beginning of my training runs, I believe that they have added strength to my running, especially to my glutes [gluteus maximus/medius/minimus, aka fanny muscles] and have improved my running form.

Merry Christmas and Happy running!