I didn’t run yesterday because Christy was working a 6:30am shift and I didn’t want to get up at 4:30 to go for a run!  I also wasn’t sure how long the run would take since it wasn’t a straight forward 6×600 or something.  The workout was 3×200, 3×400, and 2×1000.

My Garmin also isn’t nice enough to be able to put in multiple distances for interval work like this. So I set it up for 45×200 with a custom rest. The recovery for the first 6 was 90 seconds so I figured walking/jogging a 200 would be about that. I think I messed up the math to get to 45, but that’s not surprising. I also messed up a few times hitting the buttons and keeping track of the intervals. I did end up with 51 intervals (including warmup and cooldown).

So I’m not really sure how to write down or track the intervals. Looking at the intervals it appears that my fastest intervals were the 400’s because they were on the pavement at Schaper Park. Trying to keep track of 5×200 for a 1000m interval seems easy, but it wasn’t really… I either did an 800, 1000, or 1200.  Not really the end of the world, but not ideal either.

i have to do it again next week too.  Maybe I should find a track or a loop with a set distance. We’ll see.

Today felt great. It felt good to run in the morning and to be running at Wirth. And 6×400 seemed manageable.  But, it was dark! Yikes.  Having not run at 5:30 recently I didn’t realize that it had gotten to be time for the darkness to be on my running. Another sign of summer ending would be early morning dark runs again.  At least it was daylight midway through the run. I am definitely not ready for running the whole run in the dark.  I might need a new headband and it was a little loose and flopped around a little while running.

6×400 with 3 minutes rest in between wasn’t easy, but after the longer runs it felt good to get back to something shorter.

The splits were:

2:10

2:29

2:04

2:03

1:53

1:58

My total was 4.54 miles in 48:42.   I’m satisfied with that.  It seems to be in line with how I’ve been running.  I didn’t get lost, but in the dark I ended up on a trail I hadn’t meant to get on.

Definitely not what I was expecting when I set out for a run this morning. I had no doubts it would be tough. 12 miles on the trails at Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park wouldn’t be easy. But I didn’t expect it to be this hard. 

The humidity was almost 100%, but it was in the mid-60’s at the start. I wore my vest to get used to it and had both bottles full of water and a random veggie protein gummies for some food. I hadn’t needed anything yet so I felt safe with that. 

I set my virtual pacer at 8:40 and set off from the Lawrence Ceeek trailhead and ran towards Delaware Lake. I stopped to take a rock out of my shoe and was able to hit goal pace for mile 1. 

That would be the last time I would see an 8 minute mile through out. I haven’t run in that part of the park in awhile but I got through the wooden steps and ran the Fall Creek trail to the Camp Creek trail and past the Duck Pond. Somewhere in here I took my first walk break. I felt tired. I came back down around Delaware Lake and onto the paved bike trail back towards my car and the Schoen Creek trail. 

The Schoen Creek trail is a tough trail that I ran a few times when we were here in January. I was glad to see afterwards that I got some segment PRs despite not running superfast today. My thought process had been to run the East side easier trails as a warmup, then Schoen as they are the hardest and end with the Lawrence Creek loop as it is easier than Schoen and I’ve run it a lot more. 

Schoen is hard with lots of ups and downs and it seems like it goes forever! Since I had just ridden it yesterday it didn’t seem as long, but I guess since I was running so slow it did take forever! Also running the trail doesn’t seem as dangerous as I thought it was riding it (some of the trail is on the edge of the hill). 

I knew the distance was going to be close at the end of the run. Seeing the road bikers do repeats up the hill I was inspired to run up the hill to the visitor center and get a sustained hill in the middle of the run. Getting up there I finished my gummies and wished I had more food. I ran around the flat area on top and did an extended walking break. Then back down the hill and onto Lawrence Creek trail. 

I figured the trail would be busier than the others so I took my headphones out so I could hear bikes approaching me. Turns out none passed me until the last half mile and then it was a bunch! I kept trying to set goals to keep myself running and not walking. Finally I was determined to go a whole mile without stopping and completed Mile 10 without stopping and ran a lot of it around my goal pace even if the overall mile time was still in the 10 minute range. I added the Camp Glenn loop to get some extra miles in and that was a nice easy trail. I passed a dad out with his kids and he said hello and his kids asked if we were friends! After completing that mile I walked for a few minutes and then set out running again. Somewhere in there I decided that I needed to run at a slower pace so that I could keep running. That worked fairly well, but I still walked a little at the end of mile 11. Next goal was to run all of the last mile. Which I did except to let the bikers go by. There was probably 8 that went by in a short period of time. After finishing the 12th mile I walked a little bit but when I came upon the exit trail I knew I could keep running it. 

So bam I finished. 12.34 miles in 2:18:56. 11:15 average pace. My virtual partner was set at 8:40. So I was pretty far off that. I think the travel and walking around at the Indiana State Fair caught up with me. 

I also need to make sure I take better nutrition and add a bottle of electrolytes to help get me over the hump.