Water, Water, Everywhere

On Saturday, I ran 12 miles with Gary and Bev. It was a nice day but a tough run. Not too tough, though. We managed to make it through without injury, althoug Bev's knee was hurting her at the end. We ran around the lakes, stopping twice at the water stop the club had kindly set up for the marathon training group, as well as some of the public water stops. The picture above is Gary pumping spring water so he can get a drink. It's at Cedar Lake, which is mile 2 of our run.

Last Monday the half-marathon training group that I'm in did a hill workout. But this wasn't any old hill, this was the WATER TOWER HILL. I ran with Denny, a guy in my group, and it was fun getting to know him. He's from Southern California, too, and knew the area's I lived in. He even knows the area that I'm moving to.

On the way to the water tower (sidenote: because it's so flat around here, water is stored up high in an enclosed tower, which somehow helps it flow better. They can be seen from miles around and every town has one, usually with the town's name painted on it.), we saw a wild turkey on the side of the road. I couldn't believe it! At first I saw it from the back and thought it was a dog.

By the time we got to water tower hill, the other's had already climbed up and were heading down as we ascended. Any plan I had of running up the hill was soon squelched by how steep it was and how crappy the trail was. After I downloaded the data from my Garmin, I saw that it was a 32% grade. It felt like it. At one point, Denny stopped and I got worried. I asked him if he was having chest pains, but he was fine. At the top, while we were trying to catch our breath, I noticed some wise guy had written on a nearby rock, "Pain is temporary." We heard Coach Marlee calling for us, so we reluctantly headed down. But first, we took pictures. We took it easy on the way back to the club. That hill got our heart rate up!

On Wednesday night SD and I went to the Lucinda Williams concert, so I had to do the speed workout on my own. We were supposed to do 2 miles at half-marathon pace, and somehow I decided that for me, it would be 11:19 minutes/mile. Yeah, right. Who am I kidding. As if I could hold that pace for 13.1 miles. I'm embarassed to admit that I can't even calculate what the finish time would be at that pace. But I was able to hold that pace for 2 miles on the treadmill. I warmed up for 2 miles, with the treadmill incline set to 2%, then dropped the incline to 1.5% when I increased the speed. I cooled down for a mile, with a 2 minute run at 6mph.

Total miles for the week is 23.2. It's starting to creep up.