Long Run Saturday - The good, the hot, and the ugly

It's been a rough week; a rough couple weeks actually.  I can always tell my mental health is taking a turn south when I can't get up to run, I stop keeping food in the house and all I eat is crap.  So yeah, it's been rough.  I actually had what I'm calling a long workout this week, 6 mile track workout followed by 4 mile elliptical workout in no air conditioning that almost killed me.  You think I jest.

I was still 10-12 miles short on my goal mileage for the week, and I knew I needed to get in a run today.  Originally I'd planned to run before Zumba.  Alas, the 3 alarm trick didn't work today.  I went back to sleep, woke up and made breakfast, skipped Zumba entirely.  Then it was a morning and afternoon of mental negotiations to get my ass off the couch.  It was such a pretty day I didn't want to be at the gym but such a hot day I couldn't really see a long run.  Eventually I was all "do the 12 mile course, and after a couple miles just start doing intervals".  I picked a course I liked, and one that does have some shade.

It was an interesting run.  I can't tell if I'm happy with the way it turned out or not.  My brain refused to leave without music.  My playlist had tons of Pitbull which made both my brain and my feet happy.  I didn't have any firm time goals, even thinking I'd do intervals 'most of the way'.  Intervals really only came out in force in the last mile or two.  I'm not sure how long I stopped to snap photos of birds, or how much the heat slowed me down.  All in all, I'd like to run faster in the marathon, but I'm not totally discouraged either.  Even better: within the first two miles I'd already made a poop stop.  Awesome. 

I ran the first five miles outright; mile six involves that hill.  I ran up the hill and was sucking wind by the top of it so I took a longer walk than normal.  Then again about five minutes later, I took a true walk break, snapped some pictures and had a gu.  Turned out to be my only gu of the run.  I had a second surprise walk break during mile seven when I came upon a mama turkey and her babies.  Since I'm all about self preservation, I stopped running, walked and gave them all a wide berth.  The mama isn't so protective because she ducked into the weeds and left her little ones right in front of me where I could see them.

Minnehaha Park by the falls was a complete zoo.  I gave up the running path and went across the street to the bike path.  Not one biker complained to me; I think they understood my desperation.  I didn't even want to do intervals there I just kept running to make it go by faster.  Point of information: the tree in this post is still down across the path.  It's taped off now at least.  Since it's not threatening any people, power lines, or property we'll assume it's not a high priority.

All of the bodies of water I passed today are really high.  The river is at flood stage, although not quite high enough to close the Ft Snelling trail yet.  It does get that high sometimes.  The creek is absolutely busting at the seems.  I saw some tubers heading down.  That looked fun and relaxing.  Lake Hiawatha has overflowed its bounds and eaten up part of the running path.  The bike path is still above water.

After mile 11, I told my brain that it could start doing intervals of one block running, one block walking.  I wound up running a bit more than that.  The last half mile was just running around the block by my house.  Because we have to finish what we start. As soon as I got inside I jumped in the ice bath, partly for my legs and partly just to cool off.  I had a whopper of a fruit smoothie for a snack.  Yeah, I was freezing by the time I was done.  I was even more surprised to come home and enter miles in my running log and find out I had in fact made it to my goal mileage for the week.  We'll see how that combined with next week being a step back week helps me feel.