Doubling Up

AM: 67 mins
9+ miles
PM: 31 mins
4 miles

I met Jeff at the river at 7am for our newly established Wednesday trail run. Actually, I arrived a few minutes early, so I jogged 10 minutes while I waited for him to arrive. Once he got there, we set off along the dirt path for a few miles before heading up into the trails. Maybe it's because this is still a novelty to me, but for the second week in a row I was amazed at how quickly the time passed while we navigated the trails. I didn't look at my watch once (as compared to about 20 times on an average run), and spent most of my time alternating my energy between attempting to carry on a conversation and watching the feet in front of me to make sure I didn't take a tumble. We kept the pace fairly uptempo the entire time, and I definitely enjoyed the challenge.

For my evening run I was prepared to follow my usual out-and-back along the trail on Ponce, but at the last minute decided to weave through the Virginia-Highland neighborhoods instead. I ran down St. Charles, crossed Highland and continued down St. Charles as though I was headed to the park, but instead just meandered through the residential streets for a while. I absolutely adore the neighborhoods in this area, with their charming houses and lush foliage, and runs like this make me happy to be a Highlands resident. I finished up on St. Charles and then down Briarcliff to home.

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Happy Trails

AM: 57 mins.
8 miles
PM: 26 mins.
3+ miles

This morning I got up early and met Jeff at the river for an easy run. We ran around the dirt loop until we reached the entrance to the Sope Creek trails, where we spent the majority of our run. The time flew by as we followed the rolling single-track trails through the woods. It boggles the mind that we could be smack in the middle of a huge city and yet feel so far from it. This was the most enjoyable run I've had in a while, and we decided to make this a standing plan every Wednesday morning unless travel or other obligations prohibit it.


Sign that marks the turn-around point on my evening run. Not sure
what exactly I was about to enter...Decatur maybe?

In the evening I went for an easy jaunt to make sure the legs stayed loose after the hilly run this morning. Basically retraced the route parallel to Ponce that I ran en route to my hill workout the other day. Of note: for the third time in a row while running this path, I've passed the same guy sitting on one of the benches near the trail in virtually the same position. What's even more odd is that each of these runs have taken place at different times (7am, 9am, and now 6pm today), yet he always seems to be there. He doesn't appear to be homeless and, though he's seated close to the Hare Krishna temple, isn't wearing their traditional robes, so I have no idea what his story is. I'm sure he has one though, and I was kept occupied for the remainder of the run imagining what it could be.

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8k Tempo Attempt #2

18 min. w/u (2+ miles)
4 mile tempo (6:18, 6:15, 6:09, 6:13)
~30 min. trail run and c/d (4 miles)
~72 mins
10 miles


Jordan was clearly exhausted from pacing my workout.

Um, yeah. So the whole "getting up early" idea really only works if you change your watch over from Central to Eastern time when you cross from Tennessee into Georgia. So. Needless to say, we made it out to the river a tad later than we had hoped. It was very warm and humid but contrasted with yesterday we might as well have been in the arctic. The plan was the same as yesterday, only I asked Jordan to take it out closer to 6:15 than 6:10 on the first mile and then go from there. After hitting the first two miles at a respectable pace, I started feeling decent, and picked it up a bit going through the third mile. That's when things started to fall apart. At about 3.25, I started feeling light-headed. Dizzy at 3.5. At the 4 mile mark I basically came to a dead stop and tried not to hyperventilate. There was no way I could've made it through another mile at that intensity without things going south dramatically.

After I caught my breath and gathered myself, we continued around the loop for our cool-down. I also wanted to show Jordan the Sope Creek trails that meander through the forest adjoining the river, so we ran through there a bit. That was by far the best part of the run, as it was cool and shaded and quite technical in spots (note to self: maybe don't wear the T5's the next time you attempt this portion of the run). We stopped down at a creek bed to splash some water and cool off, and almost bogarted a Powerade some guy had tied to a tree branch until we took a sniff and determined it had been there for quite some time.

Overall, I was disappointed that I couldn't finish the workout, but I was pleased with my effort during the first four miles. The looseness of the dirt probably also slowed each mile by a few seconds, so I feel as though I was pushing at 6:05-6:15 effort throughout. Clearly my body needs some rest and recovery this week, and I intend to comply with that wholeheartedly.

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