Day: May 19, 2017

Better Weather – RunLog 5-19-17

by Harold L. Shaw, posted in RunLog, Running

There the weather was a LOT nicer for running today. When I got out the gym’s door at lunch time it was a light rain and a pretty good breeze out of the NW. I wanted to get at least 40 minutes in during the run and figured that it wouldn’t be too bad at all.

When I got down to the road that leads towards Family Planning, it is a road that I haven’t gone down before and I have always wondered where it leads. About a quarter mile down the road it is closed to pedestrians and there is another NRF warehouse facility. I almost took the 4 wheeler trail I saw, but decided that it wasn’t really a lunch run kind of thing to go exploring and getting lost in the woods, when I had to get back to work.

I just turned around headed back towards the little Citgo station and used that as my turnaround point. It had been light rain and cloudy the whole way, but as soon as I turned around the sun popped out and it started to warm up – quickly.

During the run back to the gym I felt really good and picked up the pace from the stop light to the finish.

Two very different runs in one, but I accomplished what I wanted and felt pretty good

One thing that I have learned over the past couple of days is that if I run without socks in my Nike Vomero 11’s, my right foot doesn’t bother at all when I run, so there is something about the socks I have been wearing that is bothering the hell out of my foot. Time to try some others.

Overall, a good run today.

Safety First – RunLog 5-18-17

by Harold L. Shaw, posted in Aging

I am finally getting around to yesterday’s run report.

It has been a tough two weeks and the writing about running has taken a back-seat to everything else.

Sometimes life gets in the way of running, but today it was safety first. Something that I just used to ignore, but the older I get, the more I have to pay attention to the environment and how safe or unsafe it might be for me to run outside.

Today, it was still over 90*F after 5:00 PM, with high humidity, but the worst part was that at various times during the day, it was almost like a snow-storm outside of pollen and seed fluff. I have a hard time with any of those conditions by themselves and when you put them all together – it means to me that I will not run.

I may be stoopid at times, but I am not stupid and yes, there is a huge difference.

So I waited and waited to see if I would be able to get a run in. Finally, at about 8:00 PM the temps, humidity and pollen levels had gotten out of the ridiculous ranges and back to it will just be miserable to run.

When I left the house it was still in the low 80’s, but there was a nice breeze. I went down-back, even though it was twilight. After I got going I was pleasantly surprised, I felt fairly good and went through the first mile in 8:34, which wasn’t too bad, considering how much I was on my feet during the Faculty Institute (I was the fly guy).

At the last-minute I decided to keep going to the Old Dump and when I did suddenly there were six gunshots out back of the trailer about twenty yards from where I was running. I looked around didn’t see anyone shooting at me directly, hadn’t felt or heard any bullets whiz by and kept running (at that point what else can you do). I figured that someone was target practicing, shooting at some varmit or doing something I really didn’t need to know about.

Yeah, only in rural Maine, you are running along some country road just after dark, get surprised by gunshots, don’t really worry about it and keep running. I didn’t even really get an adrenaline rush from it. I just kept plugging along – in some ways it was kind of surreal when I look back on it.

By the time I turned around, it was getting pretty dusky and I thought that I picked up the pace and was doing pretty good. I have a feeling that I slowed down quite a bit on the dirt section though, because I was focused on not twisting an ankle or hitting a rock/pot hole wrong or getting hit by the disk golf crowd from next door that were flying along down-back to get home after they finished up. I think that I was more scared by those vehicles than I was by the gunshots.

I made it though the dirt section in one piece and really thought that I had run that course a bit faster than usual. However, when I looked at the end time, I was pretty disappointed. Oh well, at least I got a decent run in and it was done safely.