Public Service Announcement Embedded

This morning last night I woke up at 3:16am, and wasn’t quite sure what time it was. You know the feeling where you don’t’ dare to look at the clock because if you do, and it’s 15 minutes before alarm time, you are disappointed. Well, maybe you don’t know that feeling, but I get it a ton of times. Mostly because of times like today, when if I sneak a peek at the time, and it’s 3:16am, I think, hmmm, a little over an hour to go, and next thing you know, thoughts swarm my head.

I need to send that email first thing this morning to Rachel at Company X, and I need to offer that pilot to the Germans, and I need to get with AC to strategize on the meeting next week, and…

Long story short, there was no more sleeping today, so at 3:35 I decided to get up and do stuff. Best I could come up with was get caught up on two 30 minute sitcoms on the DVR, check woot, and read some blogs.

FFWD to 5:15am. Time to get out the door for “The Julia” at 5:30. The Julia consists of running 1.5 miles from Lake Austin Run Tex to Pecos off of Enfield by way of Exposition as a warmup. That will also be our cool-down. Totaling 3 miles. It’s not a flat warmup by any means, it’s more of a gradual incline which, at 5:30am is not pleasant.

Once at Pecos, the actual workout consists of running 30 second intervals of fast and slow, fast and slow, fast and slow, fast and slow. Fast being a pace that felt fast than 10k, but not quite 5K, and slow being a moderate recovery pace, kind of a easy long run pace. Recently I finally figured out how to set the INTTMP setting on my watch, which essentially is a continuous countdown timer. I set it at 30 seconds, and every 30 seconds it beeps, so you mindlessly run and know when to slow down and speedup. (HPSA #1. Learning how to use your INTTMP is HIGHLY recommended. )
Ok, so time to run, so I took off. I’ll spare the run details, because well, I’ll just show you the route map instead, with the elevation.
Pecos at Enfield, up to Northlan, to Exposition, to 35th, over MoPac, left on Jackson and up that way. Run that for 30 on 30 off totaling 3 miles. This is not a friendly flat run. It’s a fucking hilly route. I ended up having 42 reps of 30 seconds, so in essence, 21 minutes of running.

We got a 3 to 5 minute rest, then headed back the same way we came, but this time, simply run a pace that would get us back fastr then the time it took us to get out. I ended up feeling pretty good, and ran the return 3 miles in 19mins 25 seconds, so +/- 90 seconds faster. I was really happy about that.

The cool down 1.5 miler was miserable, as I just hate having to get back to running and at that slow recovery pac => time just seems to stand still.

All in all, 9 miles of strong running before 6am! Yeah baby!

And now for the important Public Service Announcement: Upon getting back to Run Tex, we all were soaked. I’m not talking post-workout soaked. I’m taking jump into a pool with your clothes on, then get-out-of-the-pool-with-your-clothes-still-on-soaked. We all, well 6 of us that were chatting unanimously agreed that today’s humidity level was well beyond any humidity we have faced this year. So, for those of you reading this who have a workout tonight, hydrate well throughout the day, bring a towel and a change of clothes, and be prepared to have 5lbs of water come out of your body.

My running shoes were water-squishy as I walked from my parking spot to my front door.