Mother Nature is Manic Depressive

Michigan weather is ridiculous.  On Tuesday, we did a 6 mile fartlek at Grand Woods park.  The temperature was somewhere between 95 and 98 degrees, and I think I finally know what heat exhaustion feels like.  I struggled a lot with the workout, but gutted it out.  It was definitely not a workout to brag about, but it was a good chance to practice pushing through the heat.  The next day, I held off my run until about 10:30 pm, to try to avoid the heat, but it was still 85 degrees when I went out, making for another rough run.

Two days later, and we had a high of 70.  I had forgotten how much temperature can affect your ability to get in a quality effort, but I was reminded on Friday, when I ran the South Church 5K.  Initially, my goal was to run no faster than 16:00, but the conditions were so perfect that I was not able to hold back much more, and I ended up clocking a 15:27.  I won the race by  just about 3 minutes.  My splits were 4:56, 5:04, 4:51, and there was no point in the race that I felt like I was pushing it.  This race is one that I kind of just do for fun, because a friend from work helps put it on.  My real race was scheduled for Saturday, so had I not had that race in the back of my mind, I think that Friday's race would have been a very good opportunity to try for a pr.

The next day, I ran a race in Pewamo.  The winner gets $100, and you also get a dollar for every second that you run under your age group record.  My age group's former record was 15:50, so my 15:43 added an extra $7 onto my paycheck.  The race set up very interestingly, and I think that the main reason that I won was because of race experience.  Ian McDowell showed up to the race, and knowing that he had just ran at the NAIA National Championships, I knew that I was going to have to run a hard race to win.  Ian took out the first mile in 4:39/4:40, and I let him go.  In the past, I probably would have gone out with him, but I resisted the urge and held back a little bit, coming through in 4:47.  By about 1.5 miles, he started to slowly come back to me, and it was time for me to pass at the 2 mile mark.  What usually happens in a race, at this point, is I just maintain pace, and they latch onto me for a while.  This time, I ran hard for about 200 meters, which pretty much broke the race wide open for me.  Shortly after this, there was a series of sharp turns, as we got off of the trail that we had been running on.  As soon as I hit the turn, I again through in some hard surges.  The last time that I ran this race, Nate Usher did the same thing to me, allowing him to gap me by several seconds without me realizing it until it was too late.  My surges had the same effect, and by this point, I had opened my lead up to pretty close to 15 seconds.  I came through the 2 mile in 9:57, and 3 miles in 14:57.  I am pretty sure that the last 200 was long, because there is no way that I closed in a 46.

Then today, I ran 18 miles at about 6:20 pace, which capped off the week nicely.  The cooler weather has played a huge role in allowing me to get some quality runs in and hopefully Mother Nature will mellow out for a bit, so this can continue.

And another year goes by

This week started out kind of shaky, but ended pretty well.  Last Sunday, I think that I must have rolled my ankle, while running through the tornado with Scott.  I don't remember doing it, but as of Monday, my right  ankle/shin was sore and swollen.  After struggling through my runs and a workout on Tuesday, I ran an easy 5 miles and took a day completely off on Thursday.  It wasn't feeling 100% on Saturday at the race, and is actually still a little sore, but I was still able to pull out a decent time.

The Marysville Hospice 10K has pretty much become an annual event for me.  The Hospice 5k was the first road race that I ever ran, I first ran it after my freshmen year in high school, and I have ran it all but one year since then.  This was my 13th total Hospice race, and 10th time running the 10k.  It is a pretty nice race to come back to because a lot of the same people do it every year, so it is a little bit of a reunion.  Looking back at my running logs, I have ran a lot of races in the 34-35 minute range, with my two fastest being 32:43 and 32:48.  This year, I ran a 32:13, so I was pretty happy with that.

My original goal was to try to run 5:00 pace for as long as I could, but I woke up with a throbbing headache, and by the time I toed the line, I had changed my mind and was just planning on going 5:20 pace.  Ben and Charlie Richards were running the 5K, so I tucked in behind them, letting them take the wind, and we came through the first mile and a half at 5:15 pace.  I came through two in 10:31, three in 15:55 and the 5K in 16:33.  My fourth mile was around a 5:08, and I didn't see my last splits, but I had to have been a little under 10 minutes for the last couple.  The wind was at my back for the last two miles, and  it helped me get my 2nd 5K down to 15:40.  Overall, I am pretty happy with the effort.