Move It Old Man - Cathedral Pines - 19 Weeks To Go
The plan was 6am at Cathedral Pines in Long Island. The heat wave had just broken with a storm that brought down trees from NYC to Orient Point. Getting there was filled with detours.
Don, my friend from way back, lived down the road and arrived to do a few laps with me. I carried 2.6 liters of tailwind, salt tabs, cheese sticks, pecans, honey. For 6+ hours. Don didn’t even carry water, which is very Don.
It’s wonderful to catch up with an old friend on the wet pine needle trail. Yes, it smelled lovely. Time with Don flew. The last two laps after Don left were work. Lap 3 was midnight of the soul in 92% humidity. I really wanted to quit. Lap 4 was resurrection, somewhere somehow I had loads of energy and was moving much faster than I had been for the previous 4.5 hours. I saw a huge deer that bounded through the woods, it shared its boundless energy with me through some magical transfer.
Miles this week: 61.2. Mileage on my feet was almost all workouts, as I have been on vacation. NYC tends to give me about 10-15 incidental miles, which is great for training to be on your feet .
Big news this week is that my MAF pace on a hot day with elevation is just as fast as it was a month ago on a flat treadmill with temperature control. I’ve found my working range to be between 134-138 BPM. I settle in to that range after about 90 min with no cardiac drift and can kinda just go for hours. The only real spikes currently are steep hills and while eating. I also wonder if talking makes my heart rate go up a bit.
My latest run, I focused on relaxing my body. At first it was to relax the whole system and just see what it was like to keep a mellow body while running. Then I would scan individual parts (tailbone, shoulders, jaw, ankles). The results were amazing, I felt great and what seemed like going slow ended up being a much faster run with significant elevation.
