Wednesday Workout Update

Last week, I had a normal week of running and it felt pretty good!  OK, a little rough too, but I think that was because of the weather.  Let me go back to the good, first:  Jeff was out of town so Cary and I ran together both Tuesday and Thursday (I normally run with Jeff on Tuesdays and with Cary on Thursdays).  Both runs went well; we ran our usual 2.5 miles, and I felt fine the entire time.  Can't ask for much more than that, right?

But weirdly, on our long run on Saturday, I struggled.  Now in hindsight, I am pretty sure that the weather had a lot to do with it  - it was 67 degrees when we started out, with humidity at 94%.  But we haven't done a long run in this kind of weather for quite a while now, and I guess I just forgot how much harder it makes the run go.  All I knew was that when we hit the one mile mark (I ran with Julia and Diane), I simultaneously thought "WHAT??  Only one mile and I feel so bad - I can't possibly make five miles" and "Wait a minute, you regularly run 2.5 miles and have no problems, so you can't be feeling like this at the first mile."  Luckily, I was able to focus on the second half of my thinking and pushed through; it was windy and somehow, the wind was never at our backs.  Running uphill into the wind is not fun, but we did it, survived, and ended up doing 5.3 miles!

It was super draining though, but thankfully, Julia had left a gallon of water out for our group.  Just to give you an idea, there were nine of us running anywhere from 3 to 8 miles, and that jug was just about empty when we were finished - and we'd all started out carrying a full bottle (or two)!  And afterward, when we were discussing the run at breakfast, several of us were saying that we wanted to give Loretta, who is now biking while we run, extra bottles of water to hand off to us as she rides by.  Get her a basket and it could work!  Of course, Karen cracked me up when she said forget that, she just wanted to kick Loretta off of her bike and ride it back to the park herself - LOL!

So far this week, running has been iffy because of strong storms - running in the rain isn't fun, but as long as it's not cold, I'll usually get out and do it.  But when there's thunder and lightening, that's a no go, and trying to predict if the storms will be happening the evening before an early morning run with friends is tricky, which is why I woke up to no planned run yesterday and yet it was dry(ish) outside - dang it, Weather Channel!  Oh well.  If you've seen the weather reports, Texas has gotten a ton of rain...luckily for our area, we were spared the worst of it.  I was looking online at pictures of Houston, where there was widespread flooding, and despite the terrible situation, had to laugh at this shot - only in Texas, I swear:

This man rescued an armadillo as the banks of a bayou crested...now that is one serious animal lover!