Hello, summer

Right on cue, summer arrived in western South Dakota this past week. After over a month of weather more typical of Eugene or Seattle, the mercury finally hit the 80 degree mark here last week. That's all fine and good if you're a warm weather type of person. Personally, I would prefer that it stay in the 50s all day every day all year long forever and ever. Much to my dismay, I can't control the weather, so I've got to adjust to what Mother Nature throws at me, which for now means getting used to running in warm, humid conditions in the mornings.

This past week went pretty well, considering it was only my second week of running after Deadwood-Mickelson. I put in some decent miles, albeit at a relatively slow pace:

Sunday - 5.2 miles recovery

Monday - 12 miles easy. I decided to explore some new territory on this run, so took off on the highway heading west out of town for the first time ever and then looped back to the north to a more familiar road. The loop wasn't as long as I anticipated, so I had to run an out and back section on the familiar road to get the miles in, but it turned out to be a great run overall.

Tuesday - 6 miles recovery with 8x30 second strides. Didn't get off to a good start as I slept through my watch alarm and woke up about 45 minutes later than planned. I was supposed to get 8 miles in, but only had time for 6 before I had to get ready for work. Damn work, getting in the way of my running again.

Wednesday - 10 miles easy. The goal was to run down the highway south of town and then find a gravel road that heads east over Redwater Ridge and comes back down on another gravel road that I've run a million times before and would take me back into town from a different direction. Well, finding that magical route over the ridge proved harder than it seemed like it should have been and by the time I located a road that looked like it might go where I wanted it too, I had already put in enough miles and gone up enough hills that I didn't feel like exploring anymore, so I just headed back to town and ended up with an out and back run.

Thursday - 8.2 miles easy. For the life of me, I can't remember where I ran or why I ran there and MotionBased.com (where I store my Garmin data) isn't working right now.

Friday - 16.1 long. Did my long run a day early because my wife was planning on running hers on Saturday and I had the day off anyhow. I headed out early to avoid the heat and ran one great big loop. I did finally find a route over Redwater Ridge (as described in a previous post) although I approached it from the opposite side this time. I ended up spending more time than I would like running along a 4-lane highway, but I didn't have much choice by that time (I was NOT about to turn around and run back over the ridge after scaling it the first time).

Saturday - 8.35 easy. I headed out after my wife got back from her long run, which wasn't until 11:30 or so, so it was pretty damn hot outside by then. Ran down some more country roads that I've never been on before.

Total - 66.1 miles

I move into Phase II of my Daniels plan this week, which means that I'll start adding some speedwork in. Looking forward to it and dreading it all at the same time...