| I am running in Phoenix again. Ugh. We drove back from Carlsbad, CA on Saturday. I stayed up until 10:30PM to watch Michael Phelps swim the 400m medley (he won the gold medal), so the alarm going off at 4AM felt even earlier than usual. I'm going to miss running at a normal hour like I did in Carlsbad. I suppose the weather will be nice soon enough. I emailed Barry while I was on vacation to find out if he wanted to run on Sunday. "Sure," he said. "Usual time?" I replied, "Yep." We didn't talk about distance, and figured I'd see how I felt in the morning. After a week of good runs and swimming in the ocean, I felt good. I dropped some water where the canal crosses Northern Ave. That would be a 4.5-mile turnaround, and I figured we would go further if we felt like it. It's worth mentioning (to me) that there are more drunks out at 4:30 Saturday night (Sunday morning) than there are on Friday night (Saturday morning). I passed one dude on Thomas Rd. who sat at a green light for a good minute or so, oblivious to the fact that it had changed. I drove next to another fellow who was driving very slowly and cautiously-- a good sign of being drunk. And on 7th St. from Thomas Rd. up to Northern Ave., I drove next to a guy who would drift into the center turn lane, stop 50 feet before intersections, etc. Obviously lit. Anyway, I managed to avoid all of them and made it to Barry's house a little before 5AM. Before we started, we both revealed that we were both hoping the other would flake out. :) I took that as a good sign. Today's soundtrack would be the 144BPM Paradox Alley Podrunner mix (which DJ Steve Boyett describes as mellow and intense). This wasn't one of my favorite mixes, soured for me in part by the techno version of "My Sharona." After some stretching, we set off down Barry's street and then turned onto Central Ave. It was still pretty dark, so the run along the Bridle Path was a little challenging. I ran with my eyes trained firmly on my feet to make sure I didn't trip on anything. Despite this, our pace was good and I felt really strong. As we got to the canal, the sun started peaking up over the horizon. We turned south on the canal and headed toward 7th Street. I felt particularly good along this stretch, and even experienced a mild runner's high. Wheeeee! As we approached Northern Ave., I looked over at Barry and could see that 9 miles wouldn't be even close to long enough for him today. So we pressed on and continued toward 12th Street. When we reached 12th St., he asked if I wanted to go one more (intersection). That would have been 16th St., which would have added another mile-plus to our run. I was worried about adding too much distance, so I declined. Maybe next week! We headed back to Northern Ave. and picked up our water. We were both perspiring extremely heavily. After a brief respite, we set out toward Central, and then continued back down the Bridle Path. We fell into a good groove along this section, and I experienced another small runner's high. As we crossed Bethany Home Rd., I saw a runner ahead of us and picked up our pace to see if we could catch him. Nope. But I continued the increased pace, and picked it up even more as we turned onto Barry's street. I finished with a strong kick. Amazingly, we finished at about 26 seconds different than the last time we ran that route. A quick post-run swim in Vicki's pool made my legs feel good. Barry told me he is probably going to run The Other Half with Bill and I, and is strongly considering running the P.F. Chang's Rock&Roll Marathon. Cool! Activity
 Elevation (ft)  Pace (min/mile)  Splits
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Sunday, August 10, 2008
Back On Home Turf
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i like......
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