My workouts

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Ice bath in the Pacific Ocean

I love living less than an hour from the beach. In fact… I am blessed to be 1 hour from skiing on Mt. Hood, 1 hour from the beach, 1 hour from many lakes… about 4 hours from the high desert area… lakes… rivers… mountains… beach… and even an active volcano (Mt. St. Helens). What a wonderful place to live and run.

This weekend we were at the beach... and I headed out down the sand for an 8 mile run. I’m counting it as 10 though. =) In part because it can be hard to run in the sand… and also because I ran into the D River and didn’t want to get my running shoes wet so I had to veer up to highway 101 and head south from there. Unfortunately south from there is up for a few miles. I haven’t ran any hills lately… and it was painful. I made it though… and rested at the top with a wonderful view of the ocean.

After I got back my wife suggested we run into the ocean… which seemed like a fine way to cool my legs. The ocean lining Oregon is cold… very cold… and a perfect substitute for an ice bath. After freezing the legs… we headed up to the beach house and the hot tub. Heaven.

Total miles for the week… 25. I am almost ready to declare myself ‘back’ but I have to run over 10 miles first. That will be this weekend… at the beach again. =) No hills this time.

Because we are heading to the beach again I won’t be running the Wildwood 10K in Forest Park. Probably for the best because I really need a run longer than 10k. The Oktoberfest 10K will be my only chance at a PR this year it appears… which happens to be where I set my PR in 96 at 47:45 (7:42 pace). I will have to work some speed work in between now and then if I want any chance to PR.

30 miles schedule this week. Did I mention I *have* a schedule? Yep… through April of next year.

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