Flood - 6 Miles

Happy Fourth of July!  Ideally today would've been spent sleeping in because last night I was too tired to move for either Zumba or supper.  Just saying.  Instead, I woke up to my alarm just before 7am.  I wanted to head out for a run early because I knew everything would be packed later.  The added circumstance of flooded paths could only exacerbate things.  I made a good choice because I had sun and clear skies and a perfect temperature.

Route: I used my Lake Hiawatha and Minnehaha Creek route which is an out and back, and hillier than you'd expect looking at the map.  That becomes relevant later. The golf course is trying to dry out from flooding but is in that wet-muddy-stinky phase that things go through after a flood. The lake is still super flooded, over even the bike path.  The creek is more flooded than I've seen it yet this year, and it is also covering the bike path in at least one place.  By now most of the bikers are used to sharing the path with runners.  It helps the flooding is so utterly visible on the entire path now.

The workout: Be dumb like a bear.  Just run.  I finally found my heart rate monitor and I really wished I hadn't.  For now, I am trying to keep my heart rate under 152.  It's a long story.  I find that any change in elevation spikes my heart rate.  I also find sometimes the running on grass/dirt/trails makes my heart rate go up ever so slightly.  So it was frustrating to have to slow down a lot on these stupid little inclines on the path, and then it was frustrating to see the splits for those miles in the workout.  I kept reminding myself I ran much faster on the treadmill on Monday with the same heart rate.  It's just the hills.

The finisher: I did a finisher of lateral side steps and then backwards twists which I sort of learned from Zumba.  Both things fry my legs and the twists had the added benefit of frying my abs.  Excellent.  I started from 20 and counted down to 1 and it took me about 18 minutes.