Island Running

Hmmmm.... Vacation is really over... so sad... But by typing up the vacation posts and looking at the pictures again, it's not all gone quite yet.

During our one week stay on Cedar Key, I got in three runs for a total of 27 miles (the last time I had a week over 20 miles was back in April!). All the pictures from this post are from my Wednesday long run, since I was just slogging along anyways and turned it into a photo safari. So if you are not interested in the runs, just enjoy the pics! ;-)

Monday 6.5 Miles

The first run on the island was a little rough. I looked at this town on the map, but of course missed a couple of turns or remembered stuff wrong and ended up doing silly circles. We also got kinda of a late start and it was blazing hot already at 8am.

 The main set of the run was 4x 6 minutes at tempo and I hit the paces alright, but definitely got slower with each interval. We also seemed to have found the only "hills" in Florida for this little number.

Wednesday 12 Miles

A mid week long run.... Oh joy! I got a little earlier start that day, but really it didn't make much of a difference at all. I was soaking wet by mile 2.

No fancy footwork for this run. I was just slogging along for 12 miles. Before the run, I did a better job looking at the map and actually mapping out a route, so that worked pretty good. But 12 miles on Cedar Key takes a ton of out and backs and one double out and back to make the mileage.

The mosquitoes and  horse flies were chasing me relentlessly and some of my walking breaks were cut way too short for my liking... And of course there were all the picture taking breaks as well.

Even with all the break, things started to fall apart at around mile 10. The last two miles were not pretty, but I got it done.

When I got back to the condo, I didn't even bother going upstairs, but jumped into the pool right away to cool off a little. Then I laid down a little and tried to cool off some more. The rest of the day I felt like I was overheated, so I took it pretty easy.

Friday 8.5 Miles

I got my earliest run start of the week on that run and it turned out to be the one day, I could have slept in, because by mile 4, it was pouring down on me and I actually felt fairly comfortable temperature wise.

The problem with this run was, that my legs felt like crap. At this point, I already had 160 miles on the bike (separate post) and 18.5 miles running for the week and I was feeling it. I had a three mile warm-up before doing 5x 3 minutes on tempo and boy, I needed that warm-up. Funny enough, once it was time for the intervals, my paces came back pretty good.

For the cool down, I checked out what seemed to be the only road/ trail on Cedar Key, that I wasn't on yet and it turned out to be a pretty boardwalk over the bayou. Fortunately, it was still raining at this point otherwise the bugs would have probably eaten me alive.


Vacation Week Running Total: 27 Miles!

I am very very happy about this and even though the first run was a little so-so, it later on turned out as a ton of fun, to discover every corner of this little gem.