Sunday, July 7, 2019

Week 6 of 24: Training for the Run Amok 50 miler

 After a lay off and brief illness, I was curious to see how jumping right back into training would go.  Plus, we are now in the real throes of a Kansas summer including 100% humidity at 4 am and 70 degree days, and I still honestly don't feel acclimated.  The real dog days of summer are upon us and the time that Stella can continue to run with me are dwindling till it cools off in the fall.  That's okay, that means I can hit up Konza more and more trails that have icky things that I don't want to expose her to. Everyone always asks me if I have a hard and fast number of a no go for stella and I really don't.  I don't like when the dew point is above 71 for her.  We have to have water availability for her to get in (I carry water for her) if it is between 66-71 or 71+, and it pretty much needs to be in the cover of darkness or on a super shady route.  I always carry water for her and if she needs to be picked up, I will stop and call my hubby if we are on one of normal running routes around our area for him to come and get her no matter what the time.  I am very aware of her breathing and foot fall at all times, as she likes to run behind me when off leash.  Anyway, enjoy my week back to training!


Monday:  Rest day.  Again, I was thinking big picture and chose to take one more rest day to get in bed early and sleep in before I jumped back on the training wagon.  I had a big PTO meeting scheduled Monday night, so couldn't go lift, and spent lunch and a few hours with my parents mid day in Manhattan getting ready for the 4th.  We are going to have a HUGE party at our house this year and I am getting SUPER excited!  Everyone went to the carnival post work while I was at my meeting and had tons of fun.  The carnival is a block away from our house and goes for 6 nights (lucky us NOT).  I don't mind going but I am not so good at lines + heat.  Glad my family was there to take him and stand in those long slow lines.


Tuesday:  Easy 7.  Robin and I both weren't feeling great, but we got it done.  I may or may not have had two beers at the PTO meeting (yes, we meet at the bar, isn't that cool?).  Start the whining about the humidity and heat even at 5 am.  It won't be long till we will be getting up at 4 am and 3:45 am to get runs done.  I do think my run walk intervals makes it way easier to get through this mess. I don't focus on the mileage, I just focus on getting through those 4 minutes till I get a walk break reward.  I did 6 miles with my BRF robin and then 1 mile with boom boom.


Wednesday:  Easy 7.  Robin wanted me to hold off on my speed work and I honestly I felt like one more day of easy would be a good idea.  Robin had other things to do, so I had to head out by myself.  I honestly just wanted to stay in bed, but we also had a million things to do and I also wanted to try and lift at some point.  It was humid and hot and I felt like I was dying but I got it finished with my walk/run intervals.  Convinced my hubby to go with me over my lunch break to lift.  Did some deadlifts at our little local gym with him watching my form.  Felt good other than the men's bar tearing up my hand.  I hate that thing!!!!

Thursday: 6 miles of speed work.  Happy 4th of July!!!!  We wanted to get up and get it done so we could enjoy the day.  Unfortunately, this is what we woke up to.


We quickly reset our alarms and said we would re convene at 7 am to see how things looked then.  At 7 am things looked worse, so we started trying to figure out what was going to work.  My treadmill was buried behind dog crates and stuff thanks to the upcoming party, and I really didn't want to do 6 on the mill while everyone was still in bed.  

We ended up going around 8:45 am, and we swore if we saw lightning, we would stop.  Well, we saw one bolt and heard one clap of thunder, but according to my app it was more than 25 miles away, so we just headed the other way and got 6 done.  It rained, it stormed, it was humid,  and it was icky but we got it done!


We did not do any speed work till the end really but I don't care, we got in our six.  Afterwards we cleaned up and got ready for the party.  We had several employees and their families over, plus several of my running buddies.  We ate, drank, partied, shot fire works, watched fire works, and shot more fireworks.  It was an amazing night and I can't wait for next year.  


 Best friends eating BBQ and chilling on the deck.


 Red white and blue cake plus home brewed beer.  You can't get more MERICA than that!


 This is Kenny.  He is one of our best service guys and he is SO good with the kids.  He got them tons of candy in the parade and got them soaked when people came by with water balloons or super soakers.



I was pretty excited to see the Chick Fil A cow and for a Chick Fil A coupon, the kids were not.  Don't have candy, you aren't cool LOL!!!


We sat in the donor section again, which was right behind the fireworks.  It was amazing and we loved it.  30 straight minutes of a finale that rivals DC and some of the big cities.  I didn't take many pictures this year because I just wanted to enjoy it, but I did get one of the purple rain feature.  


Prince plus fire works equals amazing!!!!!  We headed back to the house full of joy, smoke, bug bites, and food.  We shot our fire works off till midnight and then slept in the next day till 9 am!!!!

Friday:  Day off and boy did i need it.  I had maybe 4 or 5 beers spaced out from 5 pm till midnight with lots of hydration in between, but I was still wiped.  I never stay up that late or I should say since I started running I don't stay up that late so it hit me hard!  Pre-running I was a horrible insomniac and would be up till 2 and 3 in the morning, so I will take this life over that life any day!


Saturday:  Long run day.  I had 16-18 on my calendar.  It had stormed all night and I had shifted my plans based on what the radar was saying at 3 am during one of the storms.  Radar looked like the storms would be through around 6 am so I slept in till 5 am and prepared to go out around 6 ish.  When I got up it was 70 degrees and 94% humidity.  YUCK!  The dew point was already at 70 which meant stella was only going to get one loop at best with me before the sun would be up and making it even more icky outside.  I had hoped to drive to Lawrence to do a Snake 10 miler preview but opted to stay local since I didn't know if they had gotten the rain we had the past few days.  I finally hit my normal route around 6:10 and got an out and back in before hitting the house to re fuel.  I had a cooler with my tail wind bottles, some stuff I could chew, and more water for Stella just in case I could get her back out.  I also went inside the house to load up on ice for boob ice and for ice in my buff.  I really do need to make or invest in an ice bandanna.  The buff does a good job but I think the the ice bandanna would do better.  Anyway, I had about 10 miles in when I got back to the house.  I needed at least 6-7 more so I headed back out into full sun and high humidity.  


I had my hubby meet me out on my out and back road with fresh ice and he got there right when I was suffering.  The ice didn't last as long but it was such a welcome respite from the heat.  I  ended up with close to 18 miles and a pure amount of hatred for summer running.  I have NO clue how I am going to get through some of these super long runs unless I get up at 3 am to run.  I have done it in the past but I am not looking forward to it.  Can we just fast forward to the fall NOW????


I left her for the last 8ish miles at the house.  When I got home, she would not leave my side.  I had to sit for a bit and cool down on the porch and she kept giving me the stink eye.  I am glad that I left her though, the sun was a bit much.  We have to get more of our runs done in the cover of darkness for sure, which is going to absolutely mean getting back up at 4 am no matter what.  


Sunday: 1 hour 20 minute run.   I was not looking forward to this run at all after the slog through the heat the day before.  The only good thing is that with a shorter run, I just get up and go so can get out earlier.  Robin joined me again and we got it done.  On our way back, a cop pulled up to us and asked if we had seen a suspect they were looking for sigh.  No wonder Stella was on super high alert when we ran through the neighborhood!   I got around 6.4 miles and Robin finished off at 7.  Post running we had track clean up at the race track and came home and chilled.  


Glad to be back in the saddle and no worse for wear.  I have another trail race scheduled for next weekend that I am hoping nothing makes me miss because I want that mug, plus my custom made medal holder is traveling from Oklahoma.  Going to be a weird week though since we had a night race again and I need to get my long run done either Friday on my usual rest day or super duper early Saturday morning before I have to travel and before the race.  Oh well, buckle up, it's going to be a crazy no matter what I do!


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