Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Easy 6 Miles on the Wimbledon Forest Loop

OBJECTIVE
4 - 6 mi. EZ (8:24 - 8:54)

ACHIEVED
6.15 mi. @ 8:48/mi.

5:09 AM 76° 87% 3 mph

Started out too slow and ended too fast today. I wanted to be around 8:50/mi. for the run which I did but the range was a bit wider than I had hoped. I wasn't running fast at the end to make the time. I was feeling pretty good and just let the pace come to me. I took the Wimbeldon Forest Loop which seemed to have a lot of traffic this morning for some reason.

Two thoughts occurred to me this morning. First, my current training approach seems better than my past ones. Previously, while only running 3 times a week, I felt like I was always "racing mentally". It wasn't that I was necessarily running fast but in my mind I was always trying to hit a certain time. In the current approach there are 4 runs each week where I'm either running "slow" or "easy". Pace isn't critical here only the miles are. It's the concept of "getting faster by training slower". Hopefully I feel the same way in a few months as the mileage piles up.

The other thought was prompted by a Runners' World article. This is going to sound odd but there have been several times over the past year+ of running when I get in the shower, there has been a strong odor of ammonia. At first, I thought maybe Paige had just cleaned the shower that day. Later, I wondered if somehow my running clothes were transferring residual laundry detergent into my skin. Failing to reach a viable explanation, I just disregarded it even though I still noticed it after runs occasionally. Well, there's an answer. So I'm taking this to be an indication that I didn't have enough carbohydrates to burn as fuel during the run AND I didn't drink enough to flush the nitrogen byproduct the "normal" way.

PRE RUN
apple juice & 1 mini powdered donut

POST RUN
SlimFast, multivitamin, @ oatmeal w/skim milk

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