Tennessee Run

Over the weekend, I went to Tennessee to attend a reunion for my high school class. I stayed with a friend, John, who is also a runner; in fact, he's going to come to run the Philadelphia half-marathon with me in November. Needless to say, he was also up for a training run.

This past week, I ran fifteen miles, of which eight were logged during yesterday's run. We had great weather: temperatures in the low to mid 70s and slight amount of humidity. John figured out an eight-mile course through his neighborhood, which, as you can see from the map, lies on a peninsula jutting out into Old Hickory Lake outside of Nashville.

This run was unusual in two respects. First, I've rarely run with someone else (except during a race). Instead, John and I ran together for the first six miles. My pace was slightly slower than usual, partly because I wanted to conserve my resource in order to finish eight miles; I also wanted to maintain a pace that made it possbile to carry on a conversation. This made the run all the more pleasant.

The run was also unusual in that I took no walk breaks for the first six miles. Nevertheless, my time for these miles was comparable to that for running with walk breaks. When I finally did take walk breaks, in the last two miles, my pace was significantly slower, probably because I hadn't been able to conserve enough resources to prior to the seventh mile.

At this point, I'll probably continue to run my short runs without walk breaks. I do run four miles faster without walk breaks than with them. Yet for the longer runs, the walk breaks pay off over the course of the entire run.

Evening on the Wissahickon

This evening I arrived home early enough to get in a four-mile run along Wissahickon Creek. As fall approaches, this is of course harder and harder to do on a “school night.” Still, today was one of those days in which I would have hated not to get in a run: temperature in the low 70s with low humidity. And while an evening run under such conditions can be pleasant, to run through the woods in the daylight is yet more gratifying.

Or at least it should be. Tonight, for the first time, I tripped and fell on the Orange Trail. I wasn’t hurt badly: I scraped up the palm of my right hand and incurred a few minor cuts. More importantly, though, I was reminded of the need to remain attentive to the path when running on the trail. Fact is, there are still too many times that I almost trip or otherwise injure myself while trail running. Spills like these remind me that I am not invincible.  (Yes, I know I’m not, but I don’t spend a lot of time pondering the fact.)

Anyway, it looks as if I’ll have no trouble getting in my miles this week. It’s always easier to find time to run on weekends, so with eight miles under my belt thus far, I’m looking forward to getting in 14 for the week.

Getting the Miles Up

I’ve not blogged in a while, but I’ve been continuing to run. Still, I have been running a little less of late—about 10 miles per week instead of the 18 I was doing earlier in the summer. Since I’m running the Philadelphia Half-Marathon on November 21, it’s time for me to get serious about getting my miles up.

In the winter and spring, as I trained for the Broad Street Run, I was able to get my miles up in the mornings, thanks to a work schedule that enabled me to go in later two or three day a week. Unfortunately, we changed our schedules around, so, if I’m going to run in the morning, I must wake up at 5:30. Thus far, all efforts to recalibrate my body clock have failed: I can’t seem to fall asleep until between 11 p.m. and midnight.

This also means that I’m going to have to run in the evenings. The Wissahickon Valley, alas, is therefore unavailable to me during the week, so I must, as they say, take to the streets.

Tonight, I made a virtue of necessity—actually necessities—and, taking advantage of a trip to return books to the Chestnut Hill branch of the Philadelphia Free Library, used that location as my point of departure for a night-time run through West Chestnut Hill. I had one of the most enjoyable runs that I ever had on streets.

Running at night in Chestnut Hill, I became aware of two types of neighborhood streets: those that have almost no traffic and those that are wide enough for the small amount of two-way traffic to coexist with runners. Since I resolutely refuse to run on concrete (that is, sidewalks), I was happy to find that I could run the entire distance safely without having to leave the pavement.

This is not to suggest, of course, that tonight’s run was without challenges. Although the humidity was moderate, the temperature was in the low 80s. Given that I’d not as regularly in the last few weeks as I would have liked, I also found that I was exerting a bit more effort to run four miles than I should have expected. This might not be too surprising, though: the first 2.4 miles were downhill, while the last 1.6 miles went back up.  Had I known this, perhaps I would have started at the 2.4 mile point (by Springside).

All in all, I had a good run. While I seldom run on pavement, I’m afraid that this will be my only option on weekdays through the fall and winter. If my knee doesn’t complain, I’ll be fine.