First day of summer

Can't believe it's the first day of summer today.  Hope all you Dads out there had a great Fathers day weekend. Kind of a strange feeling for me over the weekend. It was the first Fathers day without one for both my wife and myself. While it was great to still celebrate my own fatherhood, it was just one of those firsts where I really missed my dad and things felt quite empty when my thoughts drifted that way. If I was not up north with him over this holiday there was at least a lengthy phone conversation regarding the latest fishing stories and goings on.


Running:
Looks like I missed my chance to run Grandmas marathon in decent weather. While it wasn’t overly cool at least the temps seemed reasonable. Most of the running would have been in the 60 degree range. There was a fairly strong west wind that would have been in your face the whole way. This is likely as good as it gets for Duluth in later June and certainly better than any time since I started running marathons in 2004 and paid attention to it. I just wish they could hold signup open a little longer as long as the race isn’t filling up in recent years. Having said that I’m sure they need to close it to plan and most people are not like me and need to sign up for something to have training motivation.

This past week was another on the lighter side for me. I was able to fit another 5k race in on Saturday though. More detail on that in the weekly recap. I really need to rethink my training. I realize I’m getting older, but I refuse to believe my days of setting PR’s is past me already. I took some time over the weekend to really examine my 2006 running log. 2006 was a good year running for me. I set PR’s in 5k, half marathon and marathon distances. One big difference is that most of the year I was about 10 pounds lighter. My understanding of how much this could impact pace is 2 seconds per pound, per mile over ultimate running weight.  That could be 20 seconds per mile for me if that is right.  The biggest mileage difference I see is that most months I ran far less. I did have 3 or 4 huge months coinciding with peaking for Boston, Grandmas, and the Lakefront. The other months were far fewer miles with most runs only 4 or 5 miles per day with long runs on the weekends of 10 to 12 miles. The shorter runs were almost all done in the 6:45 to 7:30 average range.


Monday last week was an off day. I chose to take it completely off.
Tuesday I ran my 5 mile work loop during my lunch break. I tried to run it a bit faster, but the legs felt heavy and tired despite the off day. I ended up finishing in 37:03.
Wednesday the legs still didn’t feel right. I ran the same 5 mile route in a slower 40:09. I made it back just prior to a huge downpour. Hearing the thunder in the distance pushed me the last couple miles or I would have been much slower.
Thursday I did my hill repeat workout. This was probably the warmest temperatures I’ve done this in. I finished the 8 repeats and the total 7.5 miles in a pretty good 1:04:05.
Friday I was debating taking another rest day, but it was such a nice day I decided on an easy 4 miles instead. Didn’t even take the watch just went out to enjoy the time outside and get away from my desk for a bit.
Saturday I headed to Delafield to run in a local 5K. I’ve run this race every year since 2006. This race has never been my best despite it being close and I think accurately marked. This race used to be in the afternoon and part of the “Taste of Delafield” weekend. I never did like racing in the afternoon. It also had been the weekend after Grandma’s marathon, so pushing through a 5k was a little tough. This year the race was moved up to an 8am start. I thought I would try a little different tactic and try and start slower and speed up through the race. This did not work out that well.  I fell into about 25th place before hitting the 1st mile and was not able to improve on that at all. I even had one person pass me in the last half mile which never happens. I tried, but just had no response to be able to keep up. I did OK finishing 2nd in my age group with a time of 21:30, I just really thought I could do about a minute better than that. A lesson learned I guess that for me I have to give it out of the gate and hold on to do my best at the 5k distance. With warm up and cool down runs I got a total 6 miles for the day.
Sunday morning I made it out early for 13.5 additional miles. I ran over familiar ground, just modified the run taking different loops than usual.


WTD 41
MTD 114
YTD 1279
ODO 26445


Hunting:
With the rain this past week the corn I planted in the food plot has all sprouted. The rows look as complete as any I’ve planted in the past several years. Nice to get this off to a good start. The tree house I built for the kids when we first moved in (turned into a hunting blind) is really in disrepair. The heavy winds and storms along with growth from the tree have caused many of the boards attaching it to the tree to come loose. It will have to be torn down and rebuilt sometime this summer. I guess knowing it will only be used as a hunting blind now I can build it differently and better for that use.


Gardening:
This is one of those rare occasions where I actually feel caught up with lawn and garden chores. Not having to spend hours watering things has helped. I still have things to do such as trim the yard evergreens, weed and edge the flower beds, and apply some mulch but this is the normal time to do these things. I’m not scrambling because the time to do a certain chore is behind schedule or due to be completed for best result. Over the weekend besides the usual lawn mowing chores, I got the garden completed weeded, the pumpkin patch weeded and tilled once more, and also tilled between the rows of corn in the food plot. Things look pretty right now, but the back feels it though. On Fathers’ day before we went out to dinner I spent a couple hours trimming bushes and cutting brush at my mother in laws. It was due some care. It felt good to help her out a bit.  On a sad note it appears the Mother's day weekend frost made a bigger hit on the cherries, apples, and plum blossoms than I first thoughtl.  Not much of any of these fruits are left on the trees.