Rainy Run

Today: 5.00 miles
Week: 5.00 miles
March: 5.00 miles
2010: 157.93 miles

Reset all the counters. 5 miles for the day, the new week and the new month.

Woke to the sound of heavy rain and heavier wind. Looked outside to a land of slush. Apparently before it started raining, it had snowed a half inch or so. Oh well. It was 35ºF and I had a new and unused rain shell. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, got dressed and out the front door, it wasn’t really that bad. Still, some decent rain though.

Did the run into Natick and across Echo Bridge and back via Quinobequin Road. Around mile 3, it had turned into a mere drizzle. I was plenty warm, so took off the hood to cool down. The light, cool rain felt great. My feet were plenty cool after slogging through all the slush.

I was running at just around a 10:00-10:15 pace. Around mile 3.5 I decided to kick it up a notch and did about a quarter of a mile at 7:30-8:00. That felt good. Recovered for a bit and at mile 4.5 decided on one last burst. Did about 200-300 yards flat out as fast as I could go. Garmin reported a max speed of 5:43. It took the rest of the 5 miles to recover from that.

Been doing a bit better with the side stitches. Been alternating belly breathing with one of those proprioceptive cues – pulling in your belly button toward your spine. Although opposite in action, both seem to help. When I’m running fast, I breath out hard and fast every other left foot strike. I realized after I was doing it for a while, that I should actually have been timing breathing IN with my left foot strike, if that whole “organs pulling down while diaphragm pulling up” thing is true. Nevertheless, when I breath that way, I can run really fast and sustain it pretty long with no side stitches at all.

Last thing I learned recently has to do with the quad pain/stiffness/weirdness that’s been plaguing me for many weeks. It’s been slowly improving, but still, after any hard run it’s noticeable. What I realized a few days ago, though, is that after I gave my hamstrings a really good stretch, the quad pain was almost completely gone. This has worked really well repeatedly. I guess maybe my hamstrings, being tight, could be pulling things out of place and causing pain in the front of the thigh.