TEXAS Paul - Out to Pasture - Healing

I am on a business trip in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  Arrived on Monday afternoon and aftersettling in at the hotel I drove over to Wake Forest University and ran 8 miles on their track and then 2 miles on a trail here.  Nice run.  Beautiful area, lots of green trees everywhere.  Not too hot compared to Texas.  Talked with a guy on their track team who runs the 400M as his specialty.  He is impressed with those of us who run marathons.  Fun evening. 

I am putting 4 miles equivalent for this workout.  I went down into the hotel fitness center and someone already had the treadmill, so I climbed on the bike/spin machine and pushed hard for 29 minutes 15 seconds and rode the equivalent of 10 miles at a pace of 20.4 miles per hour.  I had to set the resistance level high enough so it would register the speed of the ride and it got me to sweating like a pig.  Burned 340 calories.  A great workout that left my legs wobbly when I got up after doing the 10 miles.  I will want to do this one more. 

Ran on the treadmill in the hotel.  For much of the last mile I set the incline to the peak 12% grade and did a power walk like we do climbing most of Pikes Peak.  Felt great to work that way. 

Met Tom H at Barton Springs Pool at 6:00 AM.  Temp then about 76 degrees with high humidity.  At 6:00 I realized that I hadn't dropped off a cooler at the top of the Hill of Life, so I drove up to the HOL and dropped off my cooler.  In my haste the bottle of sports drink that I had put on my car by the windshield wiper fell off onto Hwy 360 so I lost it.  Anyway, we were short about 2 bottles on this run.

We left Barton Springs Pool at about 6:20 AM and ran up the Greenbelt trail for 7 miles to the bottom of the HOL.  The Greenbelt trail is generally rocky and even has one point where we hang on to a large chain along the face of a cliff to transverse the narrow foot holds.  With the lack of rain lately in Texas the springs creek was dry most of the way up to the HOL.

After we got to the HOL we ran 4 loops up and down the HOL where the heart rate worked at 164 as we approached the top of the HOL on most of the runs up.  By now the temp was about 90 degrees with the high humidity.  We didn't push it too hard on the HOL due to the length of the total run and our lack of fluids.  With our shortage of fluids we decided to call it at 4 reps and then headed back to the Barton Springs Pool to finish our run.  We saw Remie again today on her Pikes Peak training run.  She was part of my training group in 2005 for my first Pikes Peak Marathon training.  By the end of the run the temp was about 93 degrees and humid.  We were hot and sweating like a pig. 

After the run we cooled off in the Barton Springs water just below the natural pool area.  It sure felt good to get cooled off.  Then we changed running clothes and headed over to Maudie's and had breakfast with Karen F and Karen H.  They finished their last training bike ride this morning for their preparation for their 400 mile ride in the Rockies that they leave for in one week. 

Then I headed home and got Lynn and our grand-daughter, Tapainga, and went down to Inner Space Caverns and took the tour down into the cave.  We had a great time and got lots of pictures.  Tapainga got to carry a tour guide flashlight the last 15 minutes of the tour and led the tour to the finish.  A great time.

Then we came home to watch the Belmont horse race and hoped to see Big Brown win the Triple Crown, but his jockey pulled him up in the stretch run because the horse didn't have it today, darn.   

99 degrees hot and humid.  I was the first one at McNeil HS track tonight and did an experiment running easy in the heat and monitoring my heart rate.  It was proof to me that the extremen heat and humidity does take a toll as my HR bounced in the mid 150's even though I was really holding back for easy warm-up miles. 

During our drills it even bounced in the 150's, and for the workout Donnie had us doing circuits with pushups, lunges, crunches, and jumps mixed in with running.  The HR was 167 most of the time duing the workout and that was again with me holding back a bunch.  Just a hot night, but we still had about 40 of us there for the workout tonight, a fun group.  

Another 100 degree day in Austin, TX.  The weatherman said this is like the 12th or 13th in a row of 100 or more.  No big deal, just go run at Brushy Creek.  I kept the heart rate in the mid 150's for most of the run with a highest of 159. 

Tonight was another of the RunTex Summer Series 5K races at Brushy Creek.  I ran the course but didn't figure doing a race tonight, just get in the run.  Fun to see some of the guys I know who were doing the Summer Series. 

After the run, hot and sweaty, I jumped in the water fountain/showers where the kids play and cooled off before going home.  Feels so good after a run. 

ISO 9001 audit has kept me really busy the past two weeks, but this is the last week of my granddaughter's vacation here in Texas, so when I got home we took her down to Brushy Creek to the water park where she could play in the fountains while Lynn watched her and while I would run the 1 mile loop.  After each loop I would go over in the water fountains and cool off, a great way to run in 99 degree Texas humid weather. 

We leave Saturday morning and drive all day to get to the Colorado Springs area to our daughter's home.  My running highlight scheduled for the weekend will be running half way up Pikes Peak to Barr Camp and back down.  This will be a great training run. 

We drove up to Colorado Springs, CO area for our grandson's birthday this weekend and stayed in Manitou Springs Sunday night. I got up at 6:00 and got ready for a run half way up Pikes Peak to Barr Camp and back. What a great run.  The temperature was wonderful in the low 50's for this run.  The further up the mountain I ran the more I got into the clouds, a beautiful scene.  

Running up the 3 miles of the W's was a great reminder of the relentless up, up, up that the W's are so famous for.  It was a great reminder of how this mountain wears on muscles an tests your conditioning.  It tested mine today.  

I caught up with a guy, Carl Olson, from the Colorado Springs area and ran with him most of the way up to Barr Camp. He is training for the half marathon Pikes Peak Ascent in August, his 7th one. It was good to work with him.

Even after the W's the mountain still goes up, up, up except for part of a mile through the saddle where the trail flattens out. I monitored my heart rate on this ascent to Barr Camp and basically kept it in the mid 150's, under control pretty good. During the race last year through the W's the heart rate was in the low 170's and I noted that my ascent time to Barr Camp was comparable with last year's ascent to that point, so I think this may be a good sign.

After taking a short break at Barr Camp I headed back down the trail and pushed it at a strong pace most of the way basically simulating race day pacing. It was interesting to note the heart rate on the descent averaging in the mid to low 130's, so the limiting factor on the descent is not the heart condition at all, but it is the condition of the legs after doing the uphill climb to over 14,000 feet elevation during the race. Today at Barr Camp the elevation was 10,200 feet so it is not as much a limiting factor as the full ascent to the summit.

My ascent time to Barr Camp from the trail head was 1 hr 50 min which is very respectable based on my previous years training. The descent down from Barr Camp to the trail head was 1 hr 9 min which is 1 minute faster than I have done that part of the trail in training runs over the past 2 years. Then I ran on down into town and down to the motel to join the family.

Then we drove over to Palmer Park and did a 2 mile run with my granddaughter and grandson. A great day of running.

After running on Pikes Peak on Monday, and then the 14 hour ride back to Texas from Colorado on Tuesday, we slept in this morning.  Today is also a vacation day so when I got up I worked behind the lawn mower for 4 hours that I am going to call cross training equal to 12 miles of running at a 20 minute per mile pace (lawn mower pace).  Out here in the country living we have lots of lawn and weeds to mow.  Our driveway is 400 feet long plus the lawn around the house so there is plenty of mowing to do.  The temperature is 92 degrees already and with the Texas humidity I was ready for a shower and a break by 12:15 PM. 

Ouch, what a run!  Thursday after work I visited the podiatrist for what I thought was a final visit to tell me that the plantar wart on the right forefoot was gone.  He had done two treatments of the beetle juice.  I thought the treatements were over.  Wrong.  After he trimmed the dead skin away he said there was still some seeds left and he was surprised, so he trimmed deeper in the foot and then put another treatement of the beetle juice and said not to run Thursday night, but if I could stand the pain I could run on Saturday. 

Prophetic words, if I could stand the pain.  Friday evening I cut a hole out of my right shoe insole to make a pain reduction spot for the plantar wart treatment.  This helped during today's run, but regardless the foot pain was ugly for the whole run, I felt so brave.   

So, this morning Lynn and I dropped off a cooler at the top of the Hill of Life and then I met Tom at 6:18 AM at Zilker Park at the Barton Springs Pool.  Lynn did her walk over to the Town Lake trail while Tom and I took off on our 21 mile run.  We ran the Greenbelt up to the HOL and then did 7 HOL runs, and then ran the 7 miles back to Barton Springs Pool.  I had plenty of time to talk with Tom about my run half way up Pikes Peak last Monday, this was fun. 

By the time we finished the last 3 miles the temperature was up to 95 degrees and humid.  My fingers and feet were swelling so even though we had hydrated really well I knew I needed to hydrate even better.  Tom's heart rate was going up into the 170's and he had a headache so we were both suffering by the last 3 miles.  This was frustrating because we had had a great run up to that point, interesting.  Anyway we finished with me limping pretty good with the sore right foot.   

It just felt good to know we got in the run.  Lynn and I drove home and I got showered up and have rested on the couch watching the Boston-St. Louis baseball game.  Rooting for Boston, but St. Louis jumped on them for 8 runs in the first 2 innings, darn.  So I slept through part of the game and woke for a final score of 9 to 3, darn. 

After a tough 21 miles on the greenbelt and Hill of Life on Saturday, I spent 1.5 hours behind the lownmower on Sunday so I'll take credit for 3 miles of cross training. 

101 degrees in Austin, TX, and to my surprise we had 40 of us at McNeil High School tonight, amazing.  Tam even showed up.  After drills Donnie had us do "circuits" tonight with push-ups, crunches, lunges, and jumps every 100 Meters for 4 laps of the track.  A hot night and a good workout.  Heartrate held at 165 during the workout. 

Met Tom at Lake Georgetown at 4:30 PM.  Temp 98 degrees, but there was a breeze blowing so that helped.  We ran two loops of the route across the dam, on down the road, back up the hill, then down through the rocky face of the dam, the back across the bottom of the dam, then down the rocks to the parking lot at the bottom of the dam, then across to the hill that went back up to the starting point.  Repeat a 2nd time.  6 miles of heat and good running.  Heart rate stayed about 155 for most of the run and in the mid 160's on the uphill sections.  Tom's HR was generally about 10 to 12 beats higher than mine. 

Went home and watched Cal State Fullerton beat Georgia in the last game of the College World Series, a great series for Fresno State.  They set a record as the lowest ranked team to win the College World Series.  Don't we love the underdogs? 

Met Tom at 6:00 AM at the top of the Hill of Life in Austin, TX.  Temp in the high 70's and high humidity.  We did 11 reps of the HOL.  Heart rate generally in the mid 150's on the ascent and down to 133 on the descent, same HR as I had at Pikes Peak two weeks ago. 

The last 4 reps were the fastest of all, even as the day warmed up into the 90's.  We pushed the last ascent the most and got the HR up into the high 160's, a great run.  Afterwords we drove down to Barton Springs and dipped in the spring to cool down, wow what a refreshing dip.  Then Lynn and Tom and I went over to Maudie's and had breakfast with Karen F and Karen H who gave us their report on the week they had in Colorado riding the Rockies on their bikes.  Boy, did they have some stories, wow.  What a great way to start the weekend. 

10 miles credit after 5 hours behind the lawn mower out in the fields for my wife's ponies.  The fields look a lot better.  I split this mowing into two sessions with a nap in the middle.  Texas temps at 100 degrees as I hydrated as good as I could. 

Again, we had 40 of us at McNeil HS in the Texas heat and humidity in the mid 90's, which is a drop in the temp because there were some possible rain clouds south of us.  Tam even made it tonight for his 2nd week in a row.  Daniel made it too, as I had not seen Daniel for over 3 months so I ran easy part of the run and warm-up with Daniel.

I chased Gustavo for the first two sections of the workout and pushed it pretty good getting my heart rate up to 177 which may be a record.  I guess the heat combined with pushing it got the heart going good.  I ran three more sets with Daniel and then did my own cool down mile.  Again a nice workout just to be here enjoying the good company and getting in a run that pushed my heart.