Four Mile Run

 Motivation has been tough to come by lately. The mix of a busy schedule plus Covid wearyness/fatigue really has me unmotivated on the workout front. Most of my activity has come from helping with my daughter's fastpitch softball practice or working on my basement remodel project. With fall getting under way I'm also encountering some allergy/mild asthma symptoms. The blowings from the west coast wildfires are also not helping things.

Last year at this time you would have found me coaching and running around with my son's middle school-aged football team. While I wasn't getting the workout the kids were, there was plenty of sweating and moving around to be had. My son is now in the high school program, he seems to be really enjoying the practices so far, despite being modified for Covid19 safety.

Fortunately, I'm able to find windows of time here and there and even remember to bring my gym bag. Yesterday, I decided to go for a run around the little lake between work and home. It's a two mile loop that I've written about before. The path is well kept with some slight grading here and there to keep it interesting and it's an excellent place to catch the sun setting over a small ski hill and jump.

For a casual jog, I feel I make pretty good time; keeping my pace low around a 12 to 13 minute mile. There's not much use or significant interest in running sub 10s. However, I did push a little this time out; getting my total time to under 24 minutes. 

Upon completion I decided there was enough daylight and energy left to do another loop around the lake, but decided to make it more of a stroll or saunter initially. After I caught my breath though, I found myself inpatient with my walking pace. Being 1/4 around the lake at this point, I felt it necessary to push on. Feeling mostly recovered I decided to finish this time around with some interval training. I have a very simple interval timer app, in fact it's called "Interval Timer"

So I put in 10 intervals of 30 seconds running and 90 seconds recovery. There's something about the interval training that makes time move quickly. Also, I intended it to be a jog/walk, but found myself running hard on the 2nd or third interval in. There must me some Pavlovian conditioning in me. Maybe it's the football "play hard until the whistle" mentality. 

I also found humor in my using the timer. The trail had a fair number of people on it and I didn't have my ear buds. Thus, the phone beeped aloud at the start and end of each interval. This had the particular effect of making several of the dogs that were being walked stop in their tracks and wonder what the heck was going on. I also startled one poor woman as I was passing her and the beeping began. It has me thinking that making the beep customizable to other sounds might make for a raucous distraction on the trail. Perhaps a galloping sound or just a loud "look out!" not to mention a host of bodily functions could be made use of. I guess in some senses I'm still a bit of a kid at times :)

Regardless, I put in a solid four miles. My legs were cursing me the rest of the evening and into this morning.