THURSDAYS SUCK

Thursdays are hard for me. They might not be my hardest or longest effort of the week, but when combined with getting up earlier than normal along with a second run in the evening, it makes for a long day. “Earlier than normal” means getting up at 4:40 in order to get in a 12 mile run before work. Ideally, I’d like to do that in the evening, but with a young family, I try to make my running “invisible” to them. I suppose I could do it after they went to bed. Maybe I’ll do that this summer once it gets lighter.

Anyway, my AM run called for a 2 mile warm-up, 8 miles at “pace” and 2 mile cool-down. I know “pace” is very vague, it’s an up-tempo run, but not a tempo run. It’s faster than “normal” but slower than marathon pace. Clear a mud, huh? Today it was just one of those runs that I wanted to be done with before it even started. 1” to 2” of fresh snow didn’t help matters, especially in the pacing department. The first half wasn’t too bad once I got going. When I turned around I figured out why – I had a moderate tail wind pushing me a long. I usually try to run into the wind first, especially in the winter. But I’ve been running my pace runs along the same out and back route so I don’t have to keep worrying about where to turn around. We’ll I paid the price yesterday. I ended up negative splitting, but only by about 10 seconds – with a lot more effort exerted.

I really tried talking myself out of the PM run, but managed to hop on the treadmill for 5 miles. Watching VH1’s “Most Wanted Bodies” made the time go by quickly. The only bad thing is that I only made it to about 30th. The top 30 bodes are on too late. Maybe I’ll catch them one of these nights.