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.