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Mystic Morning Tempo

October 4, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
When my alarm went off at 5:49 this morning, I initially didn't know where I was. Why is it still dark out, I thought. Am I waking up in the middle of the night? Then I remembered I was meeting Katie Edwards, one of the elite female marathoners in the BAA, for run 10 minutes hence. Not the best recovery after doing 16x400 at 9pm last night (see yesterday's rather epic log), but she and I had planned this run weeks ago and I wasn't gonna back out now. Somehow I managed to throw on my running clothes, make my bed (a New Year's pledge) and get myself down the corner of Central Square before she arrived. Harkens back to my college days of getting from bed to class or the track in ten minutes. Katie and I have never run together before so when we started off at what was barely a conversational pace for me ("How are you... doing today... I'm fine... and you?") I figured that was just how fast she generally runs. I hoped that I wouldn't slow her down or be unable to keep up. Fortunately, after 2 miles, she said to me, wow, that was a 6:48! in such a way that I got the sense that this was not normal for her, so we mutually agreed to slow down. It was still completely dark for the first third of our run, but by the time we hit the dirt trails around the Mystic Lakes we were bathed in a tepid gray pre-dawn luminescence. The lakes were beautiful and serene. Katie said they reminded her of where she grew up in Minnesota, where apparently everyone had a lake house. I hadn't actually explored the trails before, but I'd been told they existed, so I figured I could just fake it till I made it. Turns out there's no way across the dam the seperates the first two lakes and what looks like the end of the second one is really a narrow channel opening to a third. Eventually we turned around and ran back the way we came, though I made a wrong-turn on the approach to Cambridge that added on another mile. Thus is was that what Katie had initially proposed as a 10ish mile run became 13.5, at least by her watch, though looking at Strava it appears she started it late, plus I added on another mile of "cooldown" (i.e. attempted leaf-catching) after. Thus it was I ended up doing a long run just 8 hours after my hardest track workout of the year with not enough sleep and about half the run at a tempo. Good morning!

Also, Lucy, aqua-jogging is definitely closer to running than biking is (see question posed in Vogt, 10/2/19). It's roughly the same motion and you get tired aqua-jogging without going hard a lot faster than you do on a bike. That said, I don't know whether aqua-jogging or elliptical is a more accurate simulation of running, or which translates better into running muscle fitness if you're cross-training.