Sunday Morning B-run-ch

Brunch, get it? Ha ha, not one of my better puns I will admit, but I like it.

Well I couldn't resist the temptation to get up and run Ken's this morning, and I'm glad I went. I met some friends out at the dog park and we ran a variation on the standard loop. I pushed the pace quite a bit at parts and turned it into a good interval workout. I've been running so much road recently it was nice to get back on the trail. We got in a good 5 miles and then I jumped in the car and headed off downtown to meet my work group for our final group run before the relays next weekend.

Angel, Barbara and James showed up and we set off at a leisurely pace. Angel was doing 4 miles and the others wanted to get in 6, so we headed up through UT. The wind was nowhere near as bad as yesterday, but it was still noticeable as we ran into it going up Speedway. Angel cut off at 40th street for his 4 miles, and we continued on to 45th before hopping over to Red River and coming back over to Duval from 38th (via the big hill). Barbara started overheating about here, so we slowed the pace down and I gave her my water. We took it easy coming down Duval and headed through UT on San Jacinto. Barbara cut off at 17th, but James and myself carried on down Lavaca to hit the big hill before coming back up through the capitol. We had a good run, and everyone was very happy that I had iced water waiting at the finish (shades of the Sweaty Twenty). We hung around for a while yapping before heading off home.

All in all, a good weekend of running - I got in 28 miles this weekend in less than ideal conditions. My training season is definitely going to plan.

Learned an excellent lesson about hydration yesterday from Ken at Therapy Central (he gave a very entertaining talk to our running group). He told us that research has shown we can only absorb around 4oz of water at a time (with slight variations), so drinking more than that at one time does nothing (except make you go to the bathroom a lot). Thus, hydrating regularly and in small amounts is super important, because once you get behind in your hydration it is very difficult to pull it back (because of the 4oz thing). That is why the advice to drink eight 8oz glasses of water a day is outdated. This is vital information for runners and something I didn't quite get until yesterday, so thanks Ken.