Hot, Hilly, & Hard

After taking the kids to preschool this morning, Jake and I drove to Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano to run. He planned to run 6 miles and I planned to run 7. Neither of us has ever been to Arbor Hills or we would have known not to plan those kind of miles there (duh- the name of the place should have been a clue)! It's beautiful and at first the trails distracted me from the hills but it didn't take long for the heat to get to me. I was dripping sweat after a mile. Once I was hot the hills just felt tougher. I took one of the natural unpaved trails for my first lap and ended up catching up to Jake on his second lap (he didn't venture off the paved trails). His shorter run this week was 4 miles so we agreed to call it a day once he hit 4 on his Garmin. We'll both reschedule long runs for Wednesday morning. My total distance was a slow 4.39 in 49:28 (average pace 11:16). That included plenty of walking but also slower than usual running on the unpaved trails. I liked the trails and I'll go back... when I need to train on some hills and it's not 80 degrees.

On Saturday I ran with the gym run club again. There were only 6 of us (3 of the Fast Four from Wednesday) plus the leader chick and a new runner. The girls stuck together until the new girl wanted to walk after 1.7 miles so the leader chick stayed with her and I ran ahead. I don't mind slowing my pace but I'm not going to walk on a short run. So by going ahead I chose to run alone. No big deal, though. Total distance 4.32 miles in 44:19 (average pace 10:15). It was hot then, too. I can probably stop mentioning the heat because it's not going to get any better until about October. I do wonder how long it'll take to acclimate to the heat.