10.7 miles/500 vert./1:20/7:30 pace/160 avg. HR
A run on the creek path is hardly worthy of mention, but I felt
particularly good today. Started from
Potts Field a little later than I had hoped (a bit after 10am and it was
already getting a bit hotter than I would have liked), headed West on the
Boulder Creek Path and was immediately feeling good, so I started pushing a
little bit. The miles were clicking by
surprisingly fast and the uphill gradient barely seemed noticeable for the most
part.
Once the path turned to dirt West of town, I was as little
surprised to get passed by a fit/fast looking runner (I was wearing headphones
and did not hear him coming). He gave me
props for pushing the double baby jogger and shared that he too had been there
before, just with a single jogger.
Even though I was already going what I thought to be a good pace,
he sort of woke me up a bit and I upped the pace a notch, staying a few strides
behind him all the way until he turned around, a mile or so later, a bit short
of my turn around at the end of the path.
I was a little bummed, as I was enjoying the fast pacing and was looking
forward to chasing (racing) him going back down. This effort had my HR in the 180's, which is
somewhat unusual for me nowadays, which felt awesome and surprisingly
sustainable. Getting passed was a very
welcome thing, as it really made me push harder than I would have otherwise.
Kept a reasonably steady tempo on the descent, but was using the
brakes at times to keep my speed in check once I got to the steeper cement
sections. I was starting to feel a bit
cooked from the heat, but was able to maintain a respectable pace over the
final few miles, knowing that it will come in handy next month on the lower
section of Barr and Ruxton Ave.
7:30 pace is nothing to get fired up about, but considering I was
pushing 97 lbs (24lbs per girl, then the Chariot loaded with essentials, like
water, food, camera, wallet, keys, teddy bears, puppies, hats, sunglasses,
sandbox toys, spare tubes, pump etc…), it was certainly one of my more solid
runs in a while.
