Later Than Usual

Although I tend to run in the evening, in general I'm able to fit it in at a reasonable hour and before dinner. However, sometimes this just doesn't work out. Malcolm's T-Ball practice meant that one of us (the other being my wife, of course) would get to run while the other herded both boys to and from the park. I was happy to do it and figured that I'd be out running by 8pm at the latest. So I ate a nice big dinner at 6pm and had a great time watching the little tykes pretend their way around something resembling baseball. After getting home, though, it took me way too long to get out of the house. By the time I did it was likely that I'd be in the dark for at least part of the run. That means it would be pretty late since we are nearing the Summer Solstice and it stays light until 9pm.

Anyway, I finally was off on my planned 8km run at a little past 8:30 and feeling sluggish and slow. The butter chicken was not a particularly well behaved guest in my gut and not too long into the run it invited its friend Mr. Sidestitch to the party. Yay for them, not so much Yay for me... As I progressed things started to feel a bit better and by the time I took the stairs down into Taylor Creek Park I was hitting something resembling a stride, which was really nice after my last number of runs, which were creaky at best. As I kept running through the park and then took the long hill out of it and back into the residential neighbourhood I'd completely abandoned my plan to stay in the low heart rate mode and just ran on feel. Each kilometre was a bit faster than the last. The whole run took me 43:05 for an average pace of 5:23/km (8:40/mile), and that included the slow split that resulted from my walk down those stairs. My fastest split was the last at 4:47 (7:42/mile pace). The average heart rate ended up being 146bpm, and I'm not terribly displeased with that given that I thought it would end up in the 150s. Hopefully I will be able to get at least one run per week during my marathon training at this pace for the entire thing, but it was at least gratifying to be able to coast into this toward the end of a run that started off with so little promise.

Too lazy to talk about the knee, but I have an ice pack on both as I type...

Garmin don't lie.