Friday, April 15, 2011

Wk6b/D3 - 6.5K + 6 striders (and no tunes!)

6.5K @46:41
Pace 7:11/km

Whoa, Nelly! It is sooooo windy today! That's my excuse for my slower time and it's legit! :)

But first, a photo of the Kensington Bridge Dundas Street and the Blackburn Memorial Fountain at fork of the Thames River. My running path towards downtown runs along this section of the river. The shooting water really looks like this - it has nothing to do with the wind I am going to write about! ;)

The boys and I headed out together to complete my scheduled striders. I had not even warmed up by walking before I noticed that my right pant leg was soaked - one of my new water bottles was leaking. :( Bummer! A quick dump of the remaining water and we were on our way. The first 2K went well and my Garmin's recording of my splits show that I had a nice, strong start to my run today. Once I was on the pathway, I was interrupted (again) by a loose, unleashed dog, but fortunately, the dog took off when his owner called and then I was able to start my first strider ... a very good start.

However, by this point, I had changed direction and was beginning to feel the wind. Whoa! I completed my second strider, and as the path angled again, I was suddenly running fully into a headwind. LOL! It was crazy! My pace declined a full 20-25 seconds in this section because it was so hard to run into the wind! All this time, I have been quipping on the Daily Mile site to others about wind being a good resistance workout, but my words were biting me in the ass today!! It was very tiring. There was a runner in front of me with her dog for most of this stretch, but she turned around at the train tunnel and then had the wind behind her. As she passed me, she laughed and said, "Brutal wind, eh?" to which I laughed and replied, "Nooooo kidding!" See? I have witness who can vouch for the challenging running conditions!

As a result, my striders, were stacked at the end of my run. I completed all six, but they were a little sad - I didn't have much left in me after the wind running. :( Nevertheless, it was a good run, I completed my scheduled training, and the dogs were happy to be out. It's been a little while since I have had a "great" or "really enjoyable zen run" so hopefully, this will occur someday soon. :) I have an 11..5K scheduled for tomorrow (the weather is NOT looking promising), an increase of 1.5K from previous Saturday 10K runs, but only for this week. Next week, my Saturday runs turn into 13K runs and will remain at this mileage until June.

One last thing ... I ran without music today. Because I forgot about "Tuneless Tuesday," and because Thursday's run was the exact same as Tuesday's, I decided to make up for it by turning today into a "Tuneless Thursday." I bet that "if" I had used my iPod, it would have been hard to hear the music over the wind! Although I found it challenging to run without music today, I was very amused to find myself humming and singing in my head some choruses from some of my upbeat songs that I listen to while I run. :)

GYM UPDATE

I went to Kundalini Yoga tonight. It was very good; I was more in the zone with it tonight than I have been in previous classes. Judy explained to me what I was doing wrong from last week, I corrected it tonight, and I had a great workout/stretch. Now I am ready to deeply sleep .... zzzzz. Love going to yoga and then to bed early! :) :)

2 comments:

  1. Great running in the wind. it is always harder in the wind but makes you stringer for it. Way to show the wind who is boss.

    Striders at the end are really good for the training. I often do that to build up the kick at the end of the run and or race. If you can fit it into your schedule try a negative split (slower start and at the half way point kick it up all the way in) this is what those striders at the end will do.

    I like running without music, keeps me in tune with my pace and my breathing. Plus I get to hear the nature around me. Good job with no music.

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  2. Thank you for the kudos and the suggestions, Runnerbill! :)

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