Auntie Em Goes Running

Out at noon, 82 degrees, sunny and beautifully clear.  A little less humidity I think!  I tried out my new hand held water bottle, and I loved it.  Holds 22 oz, and just slides right onto your hand.  I can't get my splits for this run because I will not have my own computer back for about a week, so can't download my runs.  But I know from the reported splits while I was running that they were all "easy" miles.  

Went up to Glacier today, where it was even hotter than in Bellingham!  It was 94 when I arrived about noon, so I waited until 7:00pm to run.  Still 94, plus about 100 percent humidity once I got into the woods.  I tried to duplicate the workout that I was supposed to do in town, which was 4X1600 at 5K pace, interspersed with 4 minute jogs.  I turned into more of a free for all fartlek session, which speedy portions being 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile.  Narrow trails, a few technical bits, overgrown forrest on both sides, humidity, and HORSEFLIES!  Horseflies are carnivorous flies, approximately as big as a small airplane, and persistent.  They will follow you for miles, circling in case any body part stops moving long enough, then they will sink their teeth into you.  The bites swell up terribly and last a long time.  It was a really fun run.

Not much sleep, on account of the heat.  It really didn't cool down until early morning.  I got out a bit earlier in the day, at 6am, when it was only 70!  Still humid in the woods, so I did about 3 miles on the pavement on the roads around our little community up here, then tackled the woods for the second half.  Had a nice hilly run down along the river and back up again.  The woods are so dry!  That's very unusual here, but we've had an unusually dry summer. 

Our community also has a pool, so in the afternoon, with 102 degrees still, I took the water belt down to the pool and "jogged" for about 1/2 hour.  I'm not even counting it as miles, since I really don't feel that I'm working hard.  I am not breathing very hard when done, although my leg muscles are working. Maybe I am doing it wrong. Anyway, it was cool and nice to be in water.  

I slept better, because I think that it cooled off a bit and I moved my bed to a back room on the lower floor of the cabin.  Did my easy miles early; it was 65.  Nice.  Was too afraid to go into the woods at all because of horseflies, so I just ran around the roads.  I kept imagining that one would bite me in the leg and I would swell up and not be able to race on Saturday!

My friend Rebecca made me some coffee after, and it was yummy.  Then I drove up the mountain on an old logging road to check out the huckleberries.  I found a whole bunch!  Its a very technical place to pick, meaning its steep, brambly, thick bushes, and many red ant hills, which must be avoided.  Luckily I wore long pants.  I was so excited to be getting so many nice berries that I stayed way too long, and realized it was hot, hot, hot up there.  Then the flies drove me reallly nuts and I bolted to my car.  

Back home now in Bellingham, still hot.   

Not so hot this morning, but even more humid!  3.5 easy miles, with actual easy splits - 9:00, 9:27, 9:28, 9:15.  It is supposed to be a bit cooler today, and I'm going to spend some time in the lake, staying rested and cool for tomorrow.  I'm going to put some work and my cell phone in the kayak and paddle out to the floating boat and work!

Also have some chiropractic work scheduled, and a massage.  Why am I falling apart like this?  Hopefully I can get patched together well enough to run Saturday's race.  I'm considering carrying my handheld water bottle for the race, just to make sure I'm hydrated enough.  I would think that if the heat keeps up, they would have extra water stations, but you never know. 

Update:  Chiropractic work is done!  The hip thing was not painful to fix, and he was able to give me some exercises to help keep it in place.  The IT band, which he insisted on attacking, even though I explained that a massage therapist would be dealing with it later, was excruciating.  Imaging a really sweet faced, gentle, altogether likeable guy hurting you to the point of yelping!  Yes, I yelped!  He promised that my leg will be horribly bruised on Saturday, but I'll be running well.   

Day of rest!  Rest from running anyway.  The is a 7" X 2" bruise down my left IT band; I'll look; I'll look really colorful tomorrow.  It feels better though, and that's what counts.  I've spent some time working out some stretches for it, so should keep it in shape. 

I think I figured out what caused the IT band flare up in the first place too.  Was talking to the chiropractor, who, in addition to being an expert at torture, is a very smart running coach/trainer guy.  I've been doing some hill repeats on a hill near my house that is quite steep and seriously canted to the right (when I run on the right shoulder).  The combination of running hard up a hill and running on the canted surface is not so good for the opposite IT band, especially when its already feeling stressed.   

Race Day!  So exciting.  My friend Erin and I had a completely disasterous afternoon yesterday traveling to the race.  It was a drive of a few hours that turned into an absolute nightmare of traffic, missed exits, you get the picture.  We arrived in Tacoma around 6:00, too late to pick up our packets in the evening, so we set our alarms for 5:00am to get on the first shuttle so we could pick stuff up in the morning.  Hotel was very comfortable, but couldn't really take advantage, since I don't sleep so well under usual conditions anyway, and this particular pre race had me a little amped up.  

Our shuttle bus driver got lost!  We were supposed to start at a small airplane hangar across the river from Tacoma, in Gig Harbor.  He took two wrong turns but some woman on the bus told him where to go and we finally made it.  The woman who knew the way looked to about in my age division, so I was kind of scoping her out.  I thought she looked very strong and like a good runner.

We got off of the bus, picked up our packets, found SNO!, chatted awhile, then realized that it was freezing cold!  For me anyway.  Sno was happy because it was foggy, and I was happy for her while freezing my little butt off.  Funny, because last week was such a record breaking heat wave, I was prepared to run in a sports bra and the lightest possible shorts I could find, and here I was on race day wishing I'd thrown in a sweatshirt.  The air was also somewhat dense, not good for my asthma condition.  I just stayed positive about the air quality and chanted soothing mantras to myself.  Warm up felt great, because I needed warming up, and we finished about 10 minutes before start time.  Perfect.

I had sworn to go 9 minute miles the first few.  Did I do that?  Nope.  But my effort was very easy for the first four, and the first two had a lot of downhill in them.  So the first splits were 8:00ish.  Anyway, things felt great.  My IT band, while looking horribly bruised, was not tight, and I could only feel impact discomfort from the bruising.  The first hill was at (?) about mile 4, and it was much much longer than I expected.  I slowed and went steady, stopped just after the crest and had water at the station, walking through so that I could actually get the water.  We have a strange phenomenon here where the marine air, which creates the freezy fog, burns off and abruptly changes the weather to HOT, so I was expecting that and wanted to stay especially hydrated.  I felt great after the hill.

It was a fairly hilly course, lots of smaller ups and downs and one more somewhat longer hill.  There was a side trip into Cheney Stadium for a loop around the interior of the stadium, and the course workers were not pointing people in the right direction.  People were sort of bottling up, saying "where do we go?", and finally we got some direction! By mile 10, the air got to me, and I decided to walk 12 breathes, while relaxing the airways.  This worked, and I did it three times between 10 and 11.5.  Then there was a lot of downhill in the last mile and a half, and I mean some big, haul on down downhills.  My last two splits (haven't seen them yet) will be fast, which was one of my goals.  I came to the top of a final hill, saw a longish downhill stretch to the finish, ran down, and SPRINTED hard to the finish (200m sprint)?  That sprint made people whoop for me which I really liked.  I was in some oxygen debt, and was concerned that it would be like Seattle's race, where I couldn't walk straight once I finished running.  But that did not happen! I could walk perfectly well.  A waited a short while for Erin, then for Sno!  Erin and I hung around for awards, and unbelievably, I got a first place plaque for my division!  I was beyond surprised and excited.  Still am.