Sunday's Long Run

I usually do a longerish run on Sunday--the run prior to that is usually on Thursday so it give me two days to recover from running and hopefully I am ready for the long one.  Sunday is the last day of the training week so its nice to end it with the workout that probably wears you the most (from a constant impact standpoint). Right now I am up to about an hour and 10-15 minutes.  The last couple of weekends we've had some shopping to do in Rochester so I'll be pretty much ready to run going in, then before, or on the way back, Carin will drop me off and I'll run the rest of the way home.  Last week she dropped me in Byron--and where I was, I was about 6.5 miles from home so I just ran extra once I was near my house to make the time add up to where I needed it to be. 

This past Sunday I had anywhere from 1 hr 10 to 1 hr 15 minutes to run so I took off from Rochester (at Noodles & Co by Target north).  That's over 16 miles from home so the plan was to get as far as I can as Carin made a last shopping stop then drove the route I was on to pick me up in route.  It worked out perfect. 

The roads were pretty low traffic, very rolling, and very scenic.  I took off at about 5:15pm from Noodles, headed west on the sidewalk/bike path on along 41st Street.  Then I hooked up on the Douglas Trail and took the path south to the lot near IBM and USPS which is the Douglas Trail head.  Then I got on Valley High Dr/CR 4--usually this road is crazy with fast traffic and drivers that pay no attention to you--this is from what I remember when I lived in Roch and went on rides that used this road. However, on that day, Sunday, it was relatively traffic free.  I don't know, 20 cars the whole way?  I ran CR 4 all the way to Oxbow Park at CR 5.  Along the way there were a lot of rollers that made for a good variety in terrain.   When a car came head-on, I'd move more on to the shoulder which was sort of a dampish sandy gravely mix which actually provided a more forgiving, softer surface and was a nice change from the pounding of the pavement every so often.  I was wearing Saucony A4's which are pretty flat and thin (a road racing flat). When it came to the rollers, I didn't pound up them, but actually slowed down a bit as I needed to keep my HR somewhere in the 140's to 150's (141-160 would cover my zones 2 & 3).  I averaged 142 bpm and topped out at 157. Fastest mile was a 7:21, and the longest was 8:00 even.  It turned out to be a pretty decent average at 7:34 and 9.5 miles by the time Carin picked me up about a 1/3 mile short of Byron HS.  Overall, this was a great run.  When it comes time to put in a really long run, this route would be nice all the way home.