Two runs in one day — that’s a first!

Two runs in one day completed.  Who would have thought that I would ever do that!   A few days ago, my friend Jennifer said she was feeling better and would like to resume running with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  (We’ve run together a few times recently and we used to run together as part of the Luke’s Locker training over a year ago.)  Even though I have USA Fit Houston training in the evenings now on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I told her to meet me at Memorial Park on Tuesday morning.  I figured that she was just getting into running again, so it should be an easy run and hopefully I’ll still have enough energy by the evening to do the other workout.

Run One

On Monday night, a storm front moved into to Houston, so it was tentative whether or not we’d be able to run.  On Tuesday morning, it looked cold and drizzly but it wasn’t pouring, so I told Jennifer to dress warmly and I’d meet her at Memorial Park.  I bundled up in capris, a long t-shirt and an oversized windbreaker lined with flannel.  At the last minute, I went back inside and grabbed some ear warmers.  I’m glad that I did because even though the temps were in the 40s, the wind was blowing and I never did get very warm.

Once at the park, Jennifer said that she was up for 1:1 intervals.  The last time that we did this, I felt pretty good after the run.  So we took off and started running our set.  I thought I had set my TomTom watch to record our run but apparently I didn’t because at the end of the run I realized that nothing had been captured on my watch!  What a dumb thing to do!!  Fortunately Jennifer had captured our run and send me a snapshot so I could add it to my running log.

This was a good slow pace and an easy run.  I remember when a run at 13:17 was a hard run for me!  And somedays when its really hot outside it still is!  After the run we stretched for a bit.  Fortunately we had very good timing because as soon as I got into my car to drive home – it started pouring down rain!!

Run 2

I dressed warmly again for my USA Fit class as it was still kind of cold (but warmer than the morning) and drove over to the meeting point.  I’ve never been to this park before so I barely made it on time.  Fortunately I found parking nearby.  As usual Monica started with a brief warm up and then we were told to run over to the cloverleaf at the intersection of Waugh and Memorial.  I know the cloverleaf well as Joan from Luke’s Locker used to make us run the cloverleaf several times a session.  The run over was an easy run just to get us moving.  Once we arrived at the cloverleaf, I realized that we were only going to run one section of it – not all 4.

Our assigned workout was to run for 2:00 minutes then jog/walk for 4:00 recovery, repeating 2 times.  Then turn around and head in the opposite direction and do it all over again.  Since it had been raining most of the day, the ground was wet and kind of muddy and in some places near the main hill, the grass was kind of tall.  Then to make matters worse, it is already dark at 6:30pm when we are running.  So I’m certain the drivers on the roads nearby that saw us thought we were crazy.  Here we were running in the dark (well, kind of dark) up and around this hill.

The first two rotations were the easiest because we were running DOWN the biggest hill.  It was a little slippery because of all the rain and the grass was a little long, but it wasn’t too bad.  For the next two rotations, we had to run up the big hill.  The first time, I struggled with the last 10 feet.  I felt much better the next two times up the hill and I was pretty excited when I was able to keep running the whole way up it.  The slow run back to the park was easy and we finished up with strength work and stretching.  Whew!  I made it through 2 runs in one day!!   (I had fun coloring the below photo of my run!)

And today, the day after my 2 runs, I feel pretty good.  I thought I would be more tired, but I’m not.  Let’s see what happens after I do it all over again on Thursday!  That may be harder as the Thursday evening workout is a tempo run.