Trails and Track Today 8-19-12

Today was supposed to be an easy day and I decided to run over on the Colby Trails (upper and lower).

I wasn’t sure about how far I would run, but I parked up by the track and then ran from there down to the trails.

At first it was tough to find my pace, my legs just felt stiff and tight and it took until I started going up the hill before I found a good stride.

I did go back to that trail that I discovered the last time I was at Colby and found that it didn’t go all that far and just connected to the upper trails.

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After I got done running the trails, I decided to walk the 50 yards to the track and run a timed mile. Now remember I had been running for over an hour on the trails and had worked up a really good sweat. So a timed mile was going to be a good test for me of my conditioning and also, how my hamstrings and hip would react.

The first lap was pretty sloppy, it took a little while to smooth out my pace. Also it was the first time on the track with the Adidas Adizero Sonic 3’s. Once I got into my 3rd and 4th lap they started to feel pretty good.

I was very happy with a 7:18 for the mile after running at least 6.0 miles and then when I did the 2 pickups that I put on video, I was running at about 80% and felt really great. I still had another gear or maybe 2 left to go, which I haven’t felt like for a long time.

During the runs I also tried to video myself in different sections of the trail or track, to look at my running form. My left leg has some very weird motions to it that were really noticeable. The one thing I notice is when I am running slower my body looks very awkward, not fluid and when I run faster, I look like I run a LOT different.

Running on the trails and the short track workout were fun today. I just ran comfortably and sped up on the flat sections or double track areas and then didn’t really push that much on the track (I could have gone faster without any problems), but I wanted to stay very conservative. My hamstrings were a little tight going up hills, but as long as I didn’t push real hard, they felt pretty decent and I forgot about my hip during the running.

Yesterday I took a rolling pin to the muscles on my hip and it was really painful, but I also felt a lot of snapping and popping in there and felt a lot better afterwards and this morning. No it didn’t heal my hip, but it seemed to loosen up whatever was going on in there. Rolling pin therapy – guess I might have to break down and get a foam roller one of these days.

The 6.3 for mileage is just a guesstimate, I figure that overall I ran at least a 10:00 minute pace for this run, so it is close enough – but this is where I tend to miss the GPS, who knows maybe I will just get a cheapy GPS watch and call it good and use it mainly for getting closer guesstimates for trail running.