I was able to force myself out of bed at 5:00 again this morning. I was disappointed in this because I needed to get up no later than 4:45 to get the run in that I wanted to. My wife had to leave the house for work at 5:55, so I needed to be back home by then in case the girls woke up.
I did my usual routine: toilet, clothes, shoes, stretch. Then I went to see the dogs and let Diego in the house and got the leash on Althea. This always takes longer than you would think. After a 5 minute warm up walk, I started running at 5:31. This meant it was going to be a shorter run than I wanted. So I decided to try to run a fast pace.
The idea was all well and good, but then I started to think about the weather man I heard on TV while I was stretching. “It is already warm at 71 degrees and it is much more humid than this time yesterday. When you walk outside this morning it will be like a slap in the face.” I thought, “shit, just what I need!”
So I decided to do the best with what I had and I ran 2.35 miles in about 21 minutes. That comes to a pace of 8:57/mile. Not a bad pace, but certainly not my best. You can see all the stats here.
I will attempt the swim at 5:30 tomorrow morning and then bike to/from work. I am looking forward to that. This Saturday Mia and I are traveling with my dad and Melissa to see our sister, Jenny, and her husband, Chuck. I am super excited about this because I haven’t seen my dad in quite some time (my parents live in Dallas, TX) and it has been several weeks since I have seen Jenny and Chuck.
Jenny is 8 months pregnant and completed her first marathon with Chuck last December (while she was pregnant by the way). We ran in a race together with Melissa and although she was pregnant she still smoked us. See Melissa’s blog post about that race here. I wonder if I could beat her now? She is the one who used to trick me into exercising with her when we were kids. “Come on, race me! I will give you a head start and a sticker when we finish!” She would still beat me and I think you owe me some stickers Jenny. It wasn’t until high school when I started running track that I could beat her at a short sprint. By this time she was running much farther than me, but I have to hold on to something, right? Maybe we can run a marathon (or at least the Cooper River Bridge run 10K) together next year and I can see how far I’ve come. Melissa, Jenny how about a little sibling rivalry next year?
Friend Kevin on Facebook
Follow Kevin on Twitter
Subscribe to Kevin's RSS Feed
Subscribe by Email
You’re on! I better get a speed coach or something
I did the same thing yesterday – decided to run as fast as I could (not sprinting) to try to improve speed, and not worry about distance. I had my dog with me, so by the time we stopped 15 times so he could pee, once so he could poop, and a couple times for water breaks, I ended up clocking 4.1 miles in about 41 minutes. 10 minute miles were certainly not what I was going for :/ But it was hot and humid and I figured there’s no such thing as bad exercise, right?
Just to make sure, I then biked to the gym (5.5 miles) for a weight workout. All in all, a good day
That is a good day! And it is so much harder to run in the heat. I have heard of a special glove that some athletes wear that cools their hands and apparently helps keep your entire body cooler. I might need to look into that…
Don’t worry Melissa, all you have to do is cook up some bacon or bring Firehouse to the race and Kevin wont be able to concentrate on running. It has to be the day of the race though, I have personally witnessed the fact that he can eat an entire pizza the night before and still run extremely smooth the next morning.
Yes, it would be quite tough to resist Firehouse or bacon. And for the record it wasn’t an entire pizza, but it was darn close to it!
Yeah, we should run another race next year for a little rivalry….will I still be able to use the pregnancy as an excuse if I get smoked??? I can’t believe how much both you and Melissa are working out…I don’t know if I could keep up with you guys even if I weren’t pregnant!! Melissa I like the Firehouse idea, we should keep that in mind!!
No no, you can’t use the excuse unless you are pregnant again. Maybe I should modify the beer helmet and have it dangle a sub out in front of my face. Maybe that would make me run faster!