Last Week's Return to Summer

35¼ miles for the week

M – 0 miles, 75°F at 4AM
Tu – 4¾ miles, average pace 6:44 mpm. The measured “Dow-Minus” two-miles were 13:39 going out and coming back was 13:01, 79°F at 4AM [Dow]
W – 5½ miles, average pace 6:51 mpm, 2M/400rec/1M on the track, splits for the 2M were 6:14 and 6:10 and the 1M was a 6:09, 85°F at 7PM [B'wood Track]
Th – 0 miles, 84°F at 4AM
F - 7½, average pace 7:50 mpm, 88°F at 10AM [SeaC/NTrail-MBT/SeaC]
Sa – 7½, average pace 8:13 mpm, sunny and 89°F at 3PM [SeaC/NTrail-MBT/SeaC]
Su – 10, average pace 8:03 mpm, 88°F at 11AM [SeaC/NTrail-MBT-2M-MBT/SeaC]


This week was completely free of any pain where my foot and ankle join. In the meantime, Summer is here in full force. I reached the “squishy shoes” milestone around mile 8 during Sunday’s run. There's only about 14 more weeks until the next cool morning.

This weekend's runs were all out to the Bottomlands Park Trail and back. The mountain bike trail is still in really good condition but the spiders are starting to come out. We have banana spiders here that make very large webs. I use the "spider stick" technique to avoid running into spider webs. I find a sturdy, but not too heavy, stick and move it up and down in front of me to clear the spider webs. It's not easy; you have to keep the stick moving fast enough to clear the webs from about knee high to head high and you still have to keep an eye on the trail for snakes and roots. On Saturday I stumbled over a root and ended up on my hands and knees. It wasn't a bad fall, but I hurt my right hand enough that waving the spider stick on Sunday was much more difficult. I had a nice long branched stick Sunday, and while I was running down a more open part of the trail a deer stood in the middle of the trail watching me come at her. She either thought I was the craziest human ever, waving a stick in front of me, or maybe my spider stick reminded her of a buck's antlers. She kept watching me and didn't jump off the trail until I was nearly close enough to touch her with the spider stick.