High's & Low's

Let's start with the Low's and get those over with...

First the humidty has been pretty brutal this week, most of my runs are either early morning or evenings. I love getting the done run early and it is cooler than running at night but the humidty is sometimes so oppresive you can barely breath.

Second my stomach, after weeks of great runs with no stomach issues, almost every run this week was affected by the poop monster!! It always makes me feel bad for my running partners but they never make me feel bad, I just hate to ruin their runs!! Wednesday morning Jane, Heather and I were running at 5:15am and my stomach started within 2 miles, I told them to go on, but no way were they going to leave me!!
Thursday morning it was about 2.5 miles or so when it kicked in :(

Hmmmm well I guess that's all the lows, doesn't seem like much now that I type it out, but that stomach issue was really depressing me.

High's

Last Sunday's long run was great!!!! Although it didnt' start out that way, I knew before I left the house that I was going to have stomach problems, and it didn't take long for it to happen. We were going up the Broadway bridge and my stomach was just rolling and this is gross but I felt like "it" was just right there you know.. just waiting to come out. Luckily there is a gas station at the bottom of the bridge and I was able to take care of things but I was in there for at least 10 minutes and that really threw everything off... plus I still didn't feel 100% when I came out.
Bailey was having a rough morning, it always takes her a few miles to start feeling good and this morning it took longer than normal. Michele on the other hand was fueled and ready to go!!!! We were on River Road about 1/2 way between the Recovery Center and the Skate Park when Bailey and I heard a male voice, it sounded really loud and there was Michele way up ahead of us all alone.
We soon realized it was not bikers or fellow runners up ahead, no it was a drunk guy, young with long hair no shirt on and as we got closer we saw one shoe on one shoe off, Michele was walking towards us and I was just about to pull out my phone to call 911 when she shoves a cell phone in my hand and says tell his friends how to get here. Well if you know me, you know directions are not my thing!! But I guess I was able to help them, the guy on the other end had a bit of an attitude and finally I said your friend is in the middle of the road you can't miss him.. good luck... I gave the phone back to the guy and we took off running, we didnt' want to be there when a car load of drunk guys pulled up!! I was trying my hardest to run faster but I had to pee and the adrenaline from the encounter had caused my legs to go into shock. When we finally made it onto the River Trail where cars aren't allowed we felt much better but we never stopped running until we got to the port a potty by the boat lauch/golf course.
The rest of the run went smoothly, I never felt speedy but I felt really good.. like I could run forever. I did have to use the port a potty at the Boat Launch and one other time but no more "poop emergencies"!
Kelly met us around mile 9 and then Karen met us at 11 and they both had brought ice, cold water and Kelly brought pretzels :)
At the end we took another dip in the Library fountains and then loaded in the car and rushed back to Cabot so that James could go for a bike ride with Arland, Gary and Curtis.
We wanted 15 miles but ended up with 16.5.

I also had a good/funny run with Jane on Monday night. We waited until about 7:45pm to run so we didn't have the blazing sun, but it was still hot and humid. We chose a route that we have run several times in the mornings with Michele and I believe we've all run it at night before too. We were both a little tired from the weekend and just the heat so we decided on just a short 4 mile run. We were running along when all of a sudden there is the stupid "mosquito truck" spraying through the neighborhood we wanted to run in. We had a brief conversation about which way to go and decided to just keep going in the same direction and hopefully we would lose him. NOPE at least every mile there he was.... and then somehow or another we got turned around and we were LOST!! Seriously it was kind of hysterical, we ran around one block at least 3 times... I told Jane I know we have seen that truck 3 times now! Finally we figured out how to get back, it was dark and much later than we had planned!! It was pretty funny, but then my stomach started acting up... oh great we don't know exactly how to get back and now this... luckily I only had to stop and cross my legs a couple of times but then would be able to keep running. By the time we got back to the CC we had 5.5 miles!

Tuesday night was the Flyer's clinic and gosh it was so stinkin hot and humid and at 6:00pm the sun was still shining full blast. On our warm up run all I could think of was quitting, but we didn't and I actually had a great workout and finished it with 2x200 at interval pace that were 10 seconds faster than they were supposed to be. Dennis told me that next week at the Clinic I should just do the warm-up, some strides and then just an easy couple of miles... sounds good to me!!

Wednesday night Arland, Brenda and I went on a great bike ride! Very hilly but decent roads and lot's of fun. I felt so good when we were done, it kind of helped make up for a crappy morning run!! When we got back to the CC we were just a little shy of 17 miles so of course we had to loop around unti we got 17... actually ended up with 17.2. I hadn't been on Francesca since Miss Vic's 100 miler and I could tell it... especially in the saddle!!! LOL Francesca and Dolce were happy to play together and Brenda and I enjoyed getting to spend time together!

Thursday night Arland, Bailey, Michele and I went to the River Trail to ride.. we started pretty late but had an awesome ride. Michele borrowed Brenda's old bike and for a girl who doesn't own and doesn't ride Road bikes Michele got on that thing and was immediately comfortable and down in the aero bars before we even left the parking lot!! BRAT!!! LOL
Arland and Bailey the expert bikers took off and Michele and I tried to hang on as much as possible. I am getting better on the bike, especially with the gears so that helped, but they felt like they were slipping a little bit. Arland is outside right now as I type this cleaning the bikes, lubing the chains etc. He also worked on my brakes.. they are so hard to stop and sometimes I just throw my feet on the ground to stop and that's a good way to fall over!!!
On the way back we had a pace line for a little while and that was fun, but soon Bailey went on the "attack" and Arland had to chase her down so that left me and Michele by ourselves.. I didn't realize I had dropped Michele but when we were getting close to the skate park I slowed down.. I didnt want either of us to have to ride on River Road alone.
Because of the late start it was almost 9:00 by the time we got the bikes racked and headed home.

Heart Rate...
I have started wearing my polar heart rate monitor on bike rides and my Garmin heart rate strap on my runs.
Cheryl was talking about her heart rate a week or so ago and it made me curious about mine.
On the long run last Sunday my average heart rate was 132 and my max was 175. (That 175 must have been when we encountered the drunk!! LOL)
On the bike rides my average heart rate was 126 on Wednesday night and 133 on Thursday night.
I feel like I'm working pretty hard on the bike but really with my heart rate that low I should probably be working even harder. Same thing with the run last Sunday, I probably could have pushed the pace a little harder but I have this fear of blowing up in the last 5 or so miles of a long run so I tend to run a pretty conservative pace.
I think too that my overall fitness has really improved since I first started wearing a heart rate monitor!! I used to think that a higher heart rate avg was better but now I realize that if your heart rate is too high you aren't burning fat anymore just glycogen... so maybe those averages are right where they need to be??? Just something else for me to obsess over!!!