13.1 Mile Run to Waterville–6/25/12

I got my run in – in between the rain storms that were coming through Central Maine today. I was a bit disappointed in the time that I ended up with, but with the humidity and some other distractions – I will take it.

I have no idea what that dip in the middle of my run means, but on this stretch I was going downhill and felt pretty strong, so the pace is way out of wack. As you can see on both sides of the dip I was maintaining a consistent pace. This is a fairly open area,so I shouldn’t have lost the GPS signal or anything, just one of those great things from an iPhone App. Someday I might have to invest in a GPS watch, but that is sometime in the future.

There also was a problem with a dog just past the corner of the Bartlett Rd mile 1-2 and I probably lost a minute or so trying to ensure that the dog wasn’t going to be a pain in the butt. It was a different dog than usual and looked like a Boxer breed dog with a little bit of Pit Bull in there. So I was very careful around this dog and was using my loudest and most aggressive voice to get the owner’s attention, but was ignored. So I just slowly moved past the dog, who had crossed the road in front of me and moved up a driveway, after I started to yell at it.

This got my adrenaline going just a bit, but the GPS watch doesn’t really have any changes in that area? If the big dip had been here, I would have said yep that is absolutely correct.

It did say that I went from a 7:30 pace up to a 8:50 that mile – oh well. Then I don’t know why but every run the 2-3 mile section of this road it almost always seems to be above 9:00, I mean it is fairly flat and I don’t feel as if I am slowing down, but if you look at my past runs this one section is always slow. Maybe I just need to really focus through here and push a little harder.

Originally I was going to do 15-17 miles this morning, but my left knee seemed a little too cranky and by the time I got to the Middle Road it was telling me – no way guy to a few extra miles today.  Once I decided to not do the extra, my knee stopped barking at me and I was able to just run. 

I don’t know what happened mile 11-12, I thought I was really starting to pick up the pace with 5K left, but I was actually slowing down and then the last mile I thought I was doing about the same pace and broke 8:00? Something weird was going on with me today, especially since this section is mostly downhill or flat and I usually have a pretty good sense of my pacing and was pretty sure I wasn’t slowing down – but the GPS said I did, so I must have – after all the electronics don’t lie .

The last mile split was encouraging though, I was able to do a 7:59 mile after already running 12.0, which means that there is still a little bit of speed left in the legs and maybe I am starting to get back in shape.

Not too bad for an older fart, if I say so myself. Now that I am done with the self-congratulations and patting myself on the back .  I need to figure out why my left knee is starting to bother a little and then when I picked up the pace (or at least I thought I was), it stopped bothering? I ran in my 4.0’s and they felt great the whole way, so I don’t think it has anything to do with them – we will see, if there is any difference when I run in the new Nike Free’s.

It might be as simple as how I am holding my leg while I am sitting at the table working on the computer – I tend to put it up on the chair in front of me, which causes it to bend back a little (hyperextend). So I will keep my feet on the floor for a while and see if that helps.

Actually considering everything, it was a very good run, but it was a shame to break my streak of 4 consecutive sub 01:50:00 for 13.1 and next Monday I definitely won’t be running any long distances that day – scheduled for a routine Colonoscopy – can’t you tell I am thrilled!!!

So the first week of July will be a cut-back week, where I just run what I feel like and give the body a rest, it feels like it might need it.