Mountain Escape

The Stats 7/1/12 - 7/7/12
7/7/12: 3.00 mi; 24'08"; 7'52" avg. pace

Thanks and welcome to Krystle for getting in on the run blogging excitement last week! I checked the blog stats afterwards and saw a huge spike in page views from her friends, so that's encouraging. The family is planning on Pittsburgh's Great Race being our next joint 10k race, which should be fun as the Pirates could be making a push for the MLB playoffs in September. Hey, anything is possible.
I had another relatively tame week. The pain in my knee has almost completely vanished, but between having no power at my house until July 4th, car problems, staggering heat outdoors, and the Tour de France on tv, there has been precious little incentive to run. However, I did manage to clock one run for the week after making the trip up to lovely Snowshoe Mountain for their Homegrown Arts and Music Festival. I broke out the Newton's once again to try to continue strengthening my feet and calf muscles. Oddly, I put more stress on the middle of my left foot than my right when running in zero incline shoes. My stride differs between feet apparently; I can even see it on the treads of my Nike's where the right foot turns inward and thus wears out the tread on the outside of the shoe. The left shoe displays a more evenly spread wear pattern. Anyway, I hit up a 3 miler on the mountain from Top of the World parking lot past the Village and back. It was an undulating run, but I left the drastic inclines that stretch down to Silver Creek and back for another trip. Below is a graph showing my pace dropping with the inclines after a steady first mile and a half. The pace bottoms out near the end of the run due to a lack of recent training and a slight pain in the left knee (I hate you knee joint!).

It was good to breathe in the mountain air and escape 100 degree heat during the run. In the morning it was below or around 80 degrees with a slight breeze. I don't think we'll sniff temperatures like that in Charleston for another month or two. It wasn't the best run, but it got the endorphins flowing, which is nice. So that's the story for now: no glory, no returning to form, a lot of waiting and hoping to get back to 3 or 4 runs a week. Oh, and some fireworks:

Pop, pop!