August 2021 Monthly Running Challenge

6.5 mile run with an average pace of 9:12 min per mile.

August cumulative:
47.9/100 miles
4,230/10,000 feet of elevation

Hey @7lenny7 how's Cody 🐕‍🦺 doing these days?

Nice run @sweetdaisy13 .

@7lenny7 I love that you purposefully waited for the heat of the day so you would slow down. I hope you continue to be able to run further and further without another PF flare up.

Nice run @Teresa502 . I was thinking about the Tweetsie Trail. I have run some in Greeneville. They do have sidewalks, but they aren't the best for running. A lot of the ones down town are brick and they aren't level. Sometime, I trip just walking on them. And, it is REALLY hilly. I'm looking to see if there is an in person HM somewhere close by that I could run the same day - 2 for 1? The only one I have found so far is a $90 entrance fee at this point. I don't think it's worth it, even though running my very first HM solo seems a bit of a let down. I'll look into the Creeper Trail. Thanks for the offer about running part with me in Kingsport. I'll let you know what I decide. And, I do plan to go ahead and run it on 18 Sept - the day of. That's when I'll finish up my HM plan. Might as well do it then.

@polskagirl01 I'm glad the kids enjoyed the money-sucking amusement park. I hope your shoulders and neck feel better tomorrow.

Hey, I signed up for a yoga class! It's an Intro to Yoga class. 6 sessions over 6 weeks for $60. The yoga instructor is also a PT who works with sports and fitness issues so I'm hoping this is a good fit for me. I've been wanting to try yoga and this seemed like a good deal.

@polskagirl01 I went back a few pages to read some posts and came across your race report. WOW! That was some vertical in that race, I'm impressed!

Scott6255 wrote: »

Hey @7lenny7 how's Cody 🐕‍🦺 doing these days?

The good news is that Kody is doing very well for a 13 year old lab! The unfortunate news is that he's a 13 year old lab.

The old man was very active until my PF problem started around the first of the year. In November and December he was still doing great hunting birds (actually had one of his best years). With the onset of my PF, neither he nor I were getting much exercise. I could barely walk a couple of blocks without pain so I wasn't taking him out for his exercise and my wife wasn't interested in taking him out. In the time I was down, his physical ability started to deteriorate somewhat. Joint pain, partial laryngeal paralysis (can't control his larynx as well as he used to) and a bit of arthritis. His nervous system has also deteriorated a bit so that he doesn't always know where his feet are. All normal things for an aging lab.

He also lost most of his hearing last summer. At first I thought he was just being a grumpy old man and ignoring me, but when I realized he could no longer hear me open up his food bin, I figured out what was going on. Thankfully I have him trained for hand signals as well as voice commands.

I'm taking him on walks now when it's cool enough but it's been way to hot to take him running. With his laryngeal paralysis the heat has a greater toll on him and I won't run him until it gets below 60.

His 20 mile days are over, but I still have hope that once the temperature drops I can get him back into shape and doing what he loves, running and hunting. It will just be shorter runs, and he when we hunt I'll only let him hunt a few fields a day. His heart is certainly up to it, but the erosion of time can't be put off forever.

Here's a photo from our hunting trip last December

My husband and I have an upcoming 5k which would be our first in person race since you-know-what. Assuming we do it, since supposedly our entire state has 6 ICU beds left and 96 people wanting ICU beds.

So anyway yesterday we went down to train on the course, which we used to do all the time and haven’t done in a while due to time constraints. It’s got quite a hill compared to where we have been running and we figured we should get the bad news sooner rather than later - how out of shape are we? The answer is, between running not very much due to time and heat, and training on mostly flat terrain, it’s pretty bad. Over a minute per mile slower than last time we ran it, and we had to take a walk break in the middle due to the stifling heat. We have another three weeks to try to improve the situation but honestly it’s gonna be pretty sad. Oh well!

Speaking of the heat, I have a little plug-in app for Strava which automatically adds the local weather conditions and temperature to my run descriptions. I’m not sure what weather station it connects to, but usually it’s wildly optimistic compared to what the app on my husband’s watch reports. So we check the station, it says it’s 94 with a heat index of 115 or some horrifying number, we cook our tiny brains running, and then Strava later tells all my followers, “Oh, it was 80 with a heat index of 82!” Dude, in what universe. Anyway, yesterday it was the reverse - Strava reported a heat index of 98 and torrential rain! Well, yes to the heat (in fact down by the lake where we were the heat index got up to 104) but the rain, which caused flash flooding, didn’t happen until we were done and driving home, and of course the temperature dropped when it started raining. So we don’t get bragging rights for running in an actual boiling lobster pot. It was the sort of rain where you can’t get in your front door without getting soaked. Husband says to me, “I was going to take a quick shower to rinse the salt off before we ate lunch but now I don’t see the point!”

We did get thunder and lightning and light rain during our cool down walk, which then became a cool down rapid trot back to the woods so we could cut through them to the parking lot. The light rain and stiff breeze were actually pleasant, but I try to avoid running in lightning. I know it’s still possible to get struck by lightning in dense woods but it seemed less likely than on the open driving range, which is where we were when the rain started.

Apart from the weather it was a beautiful run which reminded me why we used to run there all the time. We saw three separate sets of does and fawns, a red tailed hawk catching a chipmunk, two herons, a skink, and we heard a great horned owl in the woods. Also, the scent of the woods in the first rain for a long time was amazing.