Category: Running

I even washed my clothes this week, but I must have had the infamous Dog Perfume going again. Yesterday I met up with a usual gang of dogs about .75 miles into my run. They always bark and follow, but rarely closely. They acted pretty much the way they normally do at that time.

Between miles 3 and 4 I came upon a small group of 4 dogs. They seemed mostly friendly until I got right up beside them. Then one of them came lunging at me. I turned and tried to speak kindly to him, it seemed to give him extra vigor. So I tried ignoring him until he was just about to strike. I then turned at him again and he backed off. He followed for a good way with the other 3 hanging back a bit, but still barking quite harshly. I finally got rid of him by running at him aggressively. Then I turned and ran away as hard as I could. He could not keep up. He was not a greyhound after all.

Then I looked up and saw, just a block away, a bigger pack of dogs. There were 7 in that group. I am not sure what the last group of dogs told them, but they got the message. As I approached, they split up. None barked and they all looked like chickens. Good for me.

I did not have any more encounters until I got to 8.5 miles. I met up with the original small group that I hit at .75 miles. They were much more aggressive the second time around. I ended up doing the same thing I did a few miles back. I ran towards the dogs (after I had already ran past) and made them back off a bit, but 2 hung on stronger and I had to charge them 3 times to get them to leave me alone.

Maybe there is something else going on than simply not washing my clothes.

Today I ran a 5 miler. It was a tough run. Not too fun. Felt like I was fighting the whole way. Nothing hurt, just did not feel into it. I have come off of 2 weeks of great feeling runs. This week, every run has been a struggle. I ended up running at a 10:42 min/mile pace, which is not at all bad for me.

But, I pushed on. Why? Because I knew that if I ran just .3 miles today I would break my previous number of miles run in a calendar month record. In March I ran 72.2 miles. Today marked 77 miles run in the month of August. This record will only stand for a month as I already have about 85 miles scheduled to run in the month of September. But, for me, it is a record that made me push on through the tough run this morning.

Congratulations to me!

Maybe that is a bit of a stretch, but we did go out to the track together this morning. My son ran my warm up mile with me. We ran it in 12:55. Then I ran a 1.75 mile speed run. My goal was a 9:00 min/mile pace. That meant I needed to run each 400 meter leg at 2:15. I did pretty good with staying on pace.

2:04 <-- too fast 2:16 <-- perfect 2:17 <-- perfect 2:19 <-- pretty good 2:22 <-- still OK 2:15 <-- perfect 2:12 <-- to round out a perfect run This worked out to exactly 15:45 seconds. I was pumped. Then I did an easy .25 miles to cool down a bit before rejoining the family on a walk. My wife walked with the 2 year old, therefore did not get any aerobic walking in. On the other hand, she did get a good 30 minutes of walking in that she otherwise would not have gotten today.

Catch Me If You Can is a new site dedicated to racing bibs. Well, maybe not the bibs themselves, but the stories behind them. Terry, from the planet3rry blog, has set up this site so that runners can send pictures or scans of bibs or other items from a race along with the race reports. He started out thinking just race numbers, but has very quickly expanded his criteria to pictures of shoes or something else that may be significant to the runner as it pertains to the race.

Non runners may not find it that interesting, but I believe most runners like to read good race reports. Count me in. Also, look for some bibs and stories to be submitted by yours truly.

Great 7 mile run on Saturday. No running Sunday. Monday was a speed workout that was scrubbed because of driving to see the whale sharks. Tuesday was swimming with the whale sharks and driving home. So I had 3 days of rest from running.

Did it help my run this morning by being off? No. I did not do poorly today. In fact the run felt great, which to me is important, though the time of the run was a bit slow. Not too slow to be bummed. 53:16 was this week’s 5 miler and last week was 52:05. A difference of 14 seconds per mile slower. Last week I even walked a good bit of the last mile. I overdid it early on in the run I guess.

All that said, I do know that rest days help. Stringing 3 in a row is nice to do on occasion. Maybe the swimming and snorkeling I did affected me. I know the snorkeling gave me cramps in my calves. They were very sore last night, though I did not notice any soreness today.