Hard ten miles

Got up early this morning to try to beat the heat and put in 10 miles. By the end of three, I was seriously considering cutting the run to 7 miles by not doing the second loop of Prospect Park. It was just so humid... I don't care what the weatherman says, if I can't even see the far side of Prospect Park across the main field, the humidity is a lot higher than 78%! I was soaked in sweat the entire time and fairly miserable. I was walking a lot, though considerably less than last week's long run, and my biggest fear - pain in the left knee - didn't materialize.

By the time I was crossing the top of the park toward the halfway point, I'd decided I could keep going - that I was in no rush today even though I had an afternoon rehearsal to make. I didn't even slow down for a halfway point break - was getting enough breaks in the walking and coughing! - and continued on with the run. I was never so happy that the fountains were working. Though I had Sustained Energy with me (always a good choice), I still just needed plain, cool water at points.

So I didn't manage to conquer the big hill today - I had to walk parts of it on both laps - but it wasn't the torture it could have been. Desert mile (the last 1.7 miles of my route, most of it downhill) wasn't exactly easy, and I was thankful I'd put the uphills in at the beginning of the run.

I had a couple good mile+ stretches during the run and that is satisfactory. I'm still not running as well as I'd like, but that's little wonder with the lousy "training" I'm doing. I think NYC Half will be a struggle, but that if I can make it out of the park OK, I should be able to reallly cruise the last half of that race.

Today's 10 miles took 2 hours, 5 minutes - a significant per-mile improvement over last weeks' 9-miler that took 2 hours, 15 minutes.