Humidity

The title says it all. Ran in the Middleton Good Neighbor Fest 5k this morning. The humidity level was somewhere in the mid to upper 90% range. Hazy, foggy. I was feeling really good going into the run, but that feeling was zapped just after the first mile. I don't think I've run in humidity like this before. Humidity and heat are two different beasts. All the water that I put in my body this morning and last night, just seemed to seep out of every pore. There was just no relief from that sticky feeling, and that started playing mind games with me.

There were times I really had to will myself to keep going, to not stop and walk, to not show weakness. I may have slowed up, but I still finished with a respectable time of 23:39 and a 7:39/mi average pace. Really, not bad. I was so disappointed when I finished, I felt like I did terrible. 58th out of 266, 10 of 26 in my division. But no, it wasn't bad. That was really good. There were a lot of really strong runners out there today. And 23:39, that's close to 3 minutes faster than I was a year ago. THREE MINUTES!!! Every month, week, race, I get a little stronger. I think I may go back to music for races, just to get that little extra mental kick.

Coming up this week I've got my week 8, 8 mile run. Should be interesting. Good news is, after Monday it's supposed to cool down. Bad news, it's supposed to rain much of the week. I guess if worse comes to worse, I'll be doing another treadmill run.

Brought the wall up to date with the exception of today's. Wow, what a year!!