Plan: 16 miles
Actual: 16 miles
How it felt:
I was tired today. I'm tired now. For some reason I decided to try a little brick yesterday afternoon - 1 hour santa luz 17 miler followed by the trail 10K. I did them both slowly, and felt OK - even when finishing up the run, but was a bit more tired than I expected today during the 16 mile run.
I've been putting on weight since returning from D.C. on Monday evening. I weighed in at 172 on Tuesday morning, but somehow managed to baloon up to 179 by this morning, which is close to 2 lbs/day. I think this is mostly water - either gained this week or lost over the DC trip - but I feel fat just the same. It's been making running slow and i'm doing about 9 min + per mile - as slowly as 9:30 for many miles. I'm thinking every 5 lbs drops my average speed by 30 seconds/mile. by that standard, if i'm down to 160 that's close to 7:30 miles for the same effort. sounds like a good goal.
For today, this is the longest run (not counting getting lost in DC) since May 11 when I ran a very fast 21 miles (7:35/mile). Today was at 9:13/mile. Much, much slower. I was sort when I began, and while I loosened up a bit, never really felt anything but fat and slow. I've deliberately been running slow - but with high mileage - in the theory that I need miles in my legs and that the fat will eventually go away as the strength and endurance return. Of course without the benefit of speed work I fear neither of those will actually occur.
At one point today I was slowly moving along the beach and an overweight gray haired guy passed me, or at least was in the process of doing so, when I said to myself "OK, that's enough" and very slowly sped up as he was beginning to go past me. Naturally, he sped up. Finally we had both gone from 9:30 miles to 8:00 min miles. I had to laugh. After torturing this guy for another few minutes at 8:00/mile I sped up to 7:00/mile. Then he slipped back. You can see this on the green strip around mile 5 below.
