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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Quite the light show on the west coast this a.m.

Yesterday was my first work out back after Saturdays race. I took Sunday off to hang out and sleep in a bit. I ate good but not great, and I drank a couple of  beers (Sam Adams Oktoberfest) as far as beer goes, this is almost as tasty as a Guinness to me, and that says a lot.
It was just a pool swim, not timed just smooth and put down some decent laps. I did choose to keep my recovery stops to 10 seconds. 2x100 warm up- 1x450 10 second rest 1x200 10 second rest 1x100 cool down. That was it, I was not really tired and my breathing tempo felt exceptionally good. I hit 5 minutes in the jacuzzi, showered and headed back to work.


On to this mornings light show.
Woke up at 5:00 a.m. for a run but didn't get out of bed until 5:20. It's amazing what weather change can do to your mind. I was never not going this morning for I know this is what it takes to get better and this is what it took to get me back this far.
But it sure was nice when it was 70 degrees at 5:00 a.m. and sun coming up at 6:00.
That being said, I filled a water bottle and gulped down a GU, added some lite stretching and grabbed a visor and I POD. 
I was good to go and looked forward to it. Scheduled run was 5 mile out and back flat road run. My only concern was the huge blast of thunder and lightning rods spiking over the ocean. My run takes me right to the waters edge and back and it looked like I was running into the eye of the storm.
The first mile was a bit unforgiving, I hadn't run a step since Saturday and my calves were still a bit tender at first but loosened right up after I focused my attention solely on the display of lightning spikes and the amount of rain I was now running through. All I could do was keep telling myself, 'THIS IS WHAT IT TAKES, THIS STUFF BUILDS CHARACTER".
Just past mile two and started to get sight of my turn around point the skies just fricken opened up. The thunder was close and loud and this motivated me more than ever to pick up my tempo, I hit my turn around and started surges as often as possible picking out land marks in my mind to get to, then back off, reset and repeat.
There is just local traffic on this stretch in the morning and not busy at all, but I'll guarantee there was a few people that said, 'LOOK AT THIS IDIOT" hows is that worth it. Hopefully there where others that said, "YOU KNOW I REALLY WANT TO START RUNNING AGAIN". Either way for me I was happy to be out there, but I was equally as happy to hit my driveway.
I hit the garage code and there was my wife standing in the doorway to the house, via garage just looking at me.
"You went running in this ? are you crazy ?"
I said "YES" and "YES" . Coffee please. I actually finished my water first, but I was trying to play it down best as possible, it was getting a bit hairy out there.
Within 15 minutes of getting home all of the electric goes out after a huge thunder clash. 20 minutes later as I'm headed to work I see 3 fire trucks putting out 2 ground transformers that had been struck by lightning, less than 50 yards away from the same road I just ran.
It's still cracking out there right now, but I got a solid run in and got to enjoy some crazy nature.

a.m. run = 5 miles @ 45:xx minutes = 9.1 mpm. pretty solid for me slopping in the puddles.          

Finish lines are good, no matter where they are.

4 comments:

  1. If it doesn't kill us, it makes us stronger. Only that stuff will kill you! Glad you weren't fried.

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  2. You talking about the crew's on Edinger? I was driving to work at 8:30 and saw them. Good run. man. Like to run in the rain.

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  3. That was them Patrick. That thing was blazing !!
    Power up now as of 12:15

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