Busting the Rust

 The end of May and beginning of June have pretty much been planned down time.  Following my taper in May I've been running nothing but easy mileage in June with more days off (6) than I've had in the previous 5 months (4).  This also included a 1 week vacation to the mountains where I got 3 runs in at altitudes of 7000 ft+ including a pretty hard effort 10 mile run at 8:30 pace.  

Now that I'm back home and refreshed a bit, I'm easing my way back into training.  It started with 7 painful miles on Tuesday.

7.03 miles
55:23
7:52 pace

Cardio was fine, but my legs were not feeling it.  Just rust from downtime and driving 2 days straight in a car maybe.  They didn't feel that good during the run even though I wasn't really pushing it and they felt worse and worse as the day progressed.

5 easy miles Wednesday

5.03 miles
40:55
8:08 pace

Followed by a harder but not too hard 7 miles today:

7.08 miles
52:32 
7:25 pace

I suppose 7:25 pace isn't something to get to excited about but my HR was relatively low and my legs felt okay.  I was pushing a bit but overall would still say the effort was on the hard edge of easy.

I didn't mean to run this fast but went by feel at the start and after getting a good first mile 2 miles in, decided to go with it.  I even zoned out a bit in miles 4 or 5 which is something I wish I would do more of when running.  You know, the state where your mind wanders and next thing you know a 1/2 miles has gone by and you didn't even think about how your legs were hurting or wanting to slow down or how much you had left...  normally it takes me 7 or 8 miles to get to this state so it almost exclusively happens on long runs... this is probably why I like long runs so much.

2021 Goals Update

1. 10,000 pushups:  6220 on pace for 13513.  My pace keeps slipping on this one... no doubt I'll hit 10,000 but the end goal is not the only point of these.  They are also supposed to be supplementing my training and building strength and core so I need to make sure I stay consistent.

2. 7500 10,000 pulls ups: 4467, on pace for...   9705?!?!?  Uh oh,  first time all year that I've dropped under pace.  My "off-season" and 9 days of travel away from my pull up bar did not help...  Actually I was worse off 3 days ago and have been clawing my way back with extra effort the last 3 days.  Hope to be back on pace by next week and unlike the pushups which are relatively easy, I think the rest on these did me good.

3. 26 Hours on the Bike:   18:56 for the year... no movement here

4. 2021 miles: 1150  the year and on a pace for 2500 miles on the nose.  Should continue to build a buffer as I ramp the mileage back up for my next training cycle.