Watermelon time

Running:
This past week turned out to be bigger than I anticipated. To recap last week. Monday 8/23 started off as usual with an off day. I took the day completely off and got a few errands done during lunch.  Almost every day last week was awesome as far as the weather. A little cooler and brilliant sunshine. Tuesday I decided to try my 7.5 mile lunch time run. I hadn’t run this in a couple months. I completed the run in a nice and easy 1:03:11. Wednesday I did the same run a little faster in 1:01:22. Thursday I again did the same route in an even faster 59:13. I wore my “fast shoes” Asics Speedstars for this run to try them out. My hope is to wear them for the Lakefront marathon in October. The shoes felt great and light and no hot spots or other issues. Friday I backed off a little and only ran 6 miles with no hills. I did this run in 49:54. On Saturday I only had a short time to run since I had to be in Watertown early to watch my daughter run her first XC meet of the year. I only put in 5 miles in 38:54. Sunday I got out a little earlier since the forecast called for near 90 degrees. The weather was great early although it did get warm near the end of the run. I managed 16.5 miles in 2:17:16. This gave me 50 miles for the week. A total I haven’t seen since early July. I have had no issues at all with the leg/quad muscle. The only thing now is fatigue since I’m building the volume back fairly rapidly. At this point I’m leaning toward taking somewhat of a cut back week and running in the Lake Country half marathon this coming weekend. The cutback coincides with what would be a taper week anyway. If for some reason I decide not to sign up I can catch up on my miles with the holiday weekend. One thing I don’t like is that I received an e-mail that because of construction they changed the course for this race yet again. I don’t think there has been a year when Oconomowoc hasn’t had some construction going on that affects this race in some way. Right now the weather looks good in that a cool down is supposed to happen in a couple days and stick around through the weekend. I really don’t even anticipate anything close to a PR or even to make last year’s time of 1:35. I’m just very interested to see what my fitness level might be right now.
WTD 50
MTD 113
YTD 1559
ODO 26,725


Hunting:
The mosquito population has finally been dialed back a bit. I think I can now get out to practice shooting the bow at least once a day. I’ll be trying to take at least 10 or so shots either in the morning or afternoon. Bow season opener is on September 18th so less than three weeks away. Usually I’ve been shooting regularly for 2 or 3 weeks already.

I asked and again received permission to hunt on the property just west of my house where I’ve taken 2 large deer over the past few years. You can never take for granted the privilege it is to obtain such a right. I’ll be heading out to hang stands and cut some brush in the next week or so. I may not hunt there until closer to October when it is cooler.

Gardening:

Harvested a few meals of sweet corn. I really had to fight the raccoons to get any. The cobs were a little on the small side this year, but were as good as ever. The latest thing to be harvested is watermelon. This is the biggest crop I have ever had. I planted 3 kinds, but so far have only noticed 2 varieties. There is a small personal size yellow watermelon that is very tasty, but has lots of seeds. I have another larger red seedless variety that is also very good. I also planted an orange flesh variety, but as of yet not found one. In previous years I always waited until the stem of the watermelon started to dry or turn brown before harvesting. I found some tips on the internet about how to tell a melon is ripe and they have been right on so far. There are squiggly growths called a “tendril” that grow along the vine. These tendrils help the vine attach to things to secure them. When the tendril closest to the melon has turned brown and dried up and if the melons “belly” is yellow the melon is ripe enough to pick.  This has worked on every one I've eaten so far.