Heat and humidity are my bêtes noires every summer, and even though it's only late spring they're already chewing on my sorry derrière when I go out jogging ... as shown by several of these quick notes on recent rambles along local trails, adapted from posts on sprintbare.com:

Slow Speedwork (28 April 2004)

An unanticipated ~90 minutes before I have to take #2 Son to his voice lesson lets me jog ~3 miles up-and-down hilly streets from home over to the track at old/former Blair High School, then do alternate fast-run-quarter-mile laps and recovery-walk half-laps — timing for the quarter miles = 1:52 + 1:49 + 1:48 + 1:49 ... almost constant and as brisk as I can make them. The walks in between occupy 1:56 + 1:50 + 2:00 ... and since I frequently have to divert around clots of walkers, little kid soccer trainees, and perambulator-pushers, I'm actually surprised that my times are so consistent. Coming back home I follow another route, 3 miles along Sligo Creek Trail (much flatter than the hill-and-dale roadway) and a measured mile along there goes in 10:11, faster than I usually do ... so overall it's 7+ miles in 77 minutes. The cool weather helps me a lot ... I really suffer from meltdown when it's hot and humid ...

Photo Jog Experiment (2 May)

8+ miles, 101 minutes: A photo shoot interrupted by intervals of running, or a run interrupted by intervals of photography? — hard to say which. I carry Paulette's digital camera and capture images of: Georgetown Branch mileposts 0.31 (start) and 0.5; Rock Creek Trail's "0" mile at the DC line and mileposts 1, 2, and 3; Marathon in the Park mile markers 22 and 23; the "Purple Line" southern and northern forks; and the 200-year-old mermaid sculpture (mermaidelicious? mermaidelubricious?) fountain in the middle of the Forest Glen seminary/girl's school/Walter Reed Annex. My plan is to edit/link the pictures with my collection of GPS coordinates, some day ...

More Slow Speedwork (4 May)

6+ miles, 67 minutes in the late afternoon — a reversal of the route on 28 Apr: from home along Forest Glen to Holy Cross Hospital, then south on Sligo Creek Trail to old Blair High School, where I do 2 fast quarter-mile laps (1:48 & 1:44) before jogging back to Che^z ... a young lady in front of me on the SCT measured mile sets a brisk pace; I finish that segment in 8:41, passing her (and thanking her) after about 2/3rds of the mile; she says she is only doing 3 miles today ... weather is superb, cool and comfortable — it can only get worse as summer looms!

Dripping (S)We(a)t (7 May)

Summer is coming, and I'm already feeling it ... today, the same route as on Tuesday (4 May), but warmth and humidity makes me suffer; I go ~10 minutes slower than last time ... 6+ miles, 76 minutes — mile along Sligo Creek in 10:26, and two "fast" laps of "speedwork" around the old Blair track in 1:49 and 1:45, walking for a couple of minutes between ...

Cold Front Relief (8 May)

Huge contrast with yesterday's sweat-fest: today's 9+ miles in 97 minutes along the Georgetown Branch (Capital Crescent miles 2-6.5 and back, plus a bit). The delightful weather brings out flocks of cyclists, inline skaters, dog-walkers, pram-pushers, and cute birds — and 9 segments timed between mileposts average 10:19 +/- 0:58, with the 9th and final mile at a wicked-fast 7:55 (ok, I admit it, that segment from Bethesda to Connecticut Ave. is somewhat downhill) which pulls the linear regression to yield a net least-squares acceleration of 8 seconds/mile/mile (without that terminal sprint I slowed on the average ~4 s/mi/mi)

Bug-Eyed (10 May)

6+ miles, 81 minutes — summer is going to clobber me this year ... wish I could figure out how to begin to get acclimated to heat & humidity! Start in downtown Kensington on Monday evening, down the Kensington Parkway to Rock Creek Trail, east to the water fountain, then four measured miles along RCT (mileposts 3-7) averaging a trifle under 12 minutes/mile, suffering increasingly along the way in spite of extensive walk breaks ... especially ~8:30pm when the black flies begin to swarm and one flies into my eye, followed by others which mistake me for a bat and go for my mouth ... ugh!

TopicRunning - TopicPersonalHistory - 2004-05-13

(correlates: 2007-09-19 - Paint Branch Trot, MinorImp, 2007-08-31 - Lap, Dog, ...)