More Recovery Running

It's just occurred to me that all these entries for "recovery runs" might lead someone to think that I'm in some sort of 12-Step Program to "recover" from a dependency problem. Well, to tell you the truth, I guess I do have some addictions that have proven tough to kick. One of them is running, of course, so the "recovery" runs would only feed that, wouldn't they? The others are mostly musical, my CD acquisition thing (although I'm down to 3 or 4 a month, nowadays), my GAS (guitar/gear acquisition syndrome), but it's under control since I have most of the musical toys that I've desired except that cool Taylor T5 guitar on my list, and Microphone Envy, in which I keep making eyes at a couple of nice vocal mics to add to the old gear locker some day. All you can do is take it one step at a time, right?

Okay, enough digression. Today, I got out on the road at 8:45 am, and it was still nice and reasonably cool even then. Such a change from even a few weeks ago, when it was insufferably hot once the sun came up! The mission was to stretch out the Thursday recovery run a little bit from the 51 minutes that I did last week. I figured I'd shoot for adding 5 minutes, and if I did more than that, that would be okay. Again armed with all sorts of electronica, I switched on the iPod, synched up the GPS, and got my HR monitor up to speed, and I was off. During the run, I mostly kept an eye on the HR number, to keep it very low in the totally recovery range as much as possible. It was a nice morning, and except for keeping a vigilant eye out for the garbage and recycling trucks in the 'Hood, it was stress-free.

A really easy first mile let my legs loosen up, but I felt fine from the start. After the first 3 miles that looped back to the house, I was having a fun time, and I headed back to the nature preserve behind the 'Hood after that for the second half of the run. It's always nice to get away from asphalt and hit the dirt and gravel roads and trails back there. When I got to the first logical turnaround point, I was still having too much fun, so I kept on going and went all the way down to a more rocky portion of the trail for the second turnaround. That is a little more uncertain footing, but as long as you watch where you're putting your feet, you're fine. The trail ending, I picked it up just a little as I headed back on the last half mile of road, but I never really pushed it too hard, since the purpose of the run was to go easy. I finished off things by doing 4 striders after I had cooled down a bit.

Once I got stopped and checked the distance and time numbers, I was really surprised to find that I had gone 6.4 miles at an average pace of 9:07/mile. That was pretty quick for a recovery run, but later analysis of the HR numbers showed that I was a good boy today and stayed in the proper range for the vast majority of the run. This was a nice surprise. I guess that shows how much 15-20 degrees of temperature changes the load on your body during a run (the Tuesday run had similar HR numbers, but my pace was way slower, almost 10:00/mile for 3 miles!).

So, a fun run, and now except for some cross-training the next few days (mowing the yard, and cycle/gym tomorrow), I don't have a running appointment until Saturday morning, when I get to do the first 15 miles of the marathoners' 20 mile run with them. I guess the official kickoff for Freescale training is next weekend, and I'm ready for it to start. It'll be cool to have a whole tribe of people doing the same thing on Saturdays as I'll be doing, instead of making up my own weekend program like we've done all summer long.