the best place to run in Philadelphia…
today’s run took me on a short car ride from home to the Wissahickon Creek Path, aka Forbidden Drive. the choice of places to run along the creek varies from the main artery- a gravel and dirt path as wide as a road that undulates side by side with the rolling creek to the trails that connect to the main path at various spots along the approximately 5 mile out and back. at the end where I begin my runs, there is the Northwestern Ave parking lot with the horse stables to the left. Bruno’s, a great post-run spot, is on the corner of Northwestern Ave and Germantown Pk. I have run there dozens of times and it never gets old.
today’s run was a chance to extend my distance, advance my fitness and sweat. the temps today are down from the triple digits of yesterday, but the humidity is up, so there is no break from the weather. today might have been tougher than yesterday because the air was so thick and I was drenched - head to toe, shoes included - by the mid-point of the run. while it is not optimum running weather, I’d rather run in this weather than freezing or below freezing temperatures. no layers needed on a day like today. in fact, the less you wear the better, so a shirtless run it was. the only problem with running shirtless is there is nothing to soak up the sweat from the torso and it cascades down the body to the shorts. by the 35:00 mark today, my shorts were soaked. luckily, running shorts don’t get much heavier when they are wet. the second half of the run was mostly uphill, with soaked shorts, socks and shoes. needless to say, not the best conditions to run. but, I made it through and advanced my fitness a little more. the outward portion took a reasonable 30:41, but it is mostly downhill. the inward portion was about 4 minutes longer with the mostly uphill, dusty path causing more difficulty. compounding the difficulty was the dust from a police car that was patrolling the area and the two construction crews working on the infrastructure of the area. the last mile seemed to take forever as I began the “it’s only a little longer…“ in my head with about a 1 and 1/2 miles to go to the finish. there is a race on the path at the end of the month, the Run for the Hill of It…I ran it once, maybe 10 yrs ago. it is a fun 5 mile race with an out & back format. like my run today, it is fast for the first half and not so much on the way back. I just may do the race again this year for fun.
today’s run got me over 550 miles for the year. by the end of the weekend, I should be over 560 and heading toward 600 in the next week and half. with any luck and good health, 700 by the end of the month is not out of the question.
I plan to run a few doubles here and there when I can for the remainder of the summer. Mondays and Wednesdays should be easy to do that with a morning run and then some running on the course with the XC kids at night.
tomorrow will be an easy day with 30 minutes of light running and some strides. Saturday is a race day - a real race day - for the first time in a while. I feel ready and motivated to run and go hard from start to finish. the course is fast and flat along a river path in Wilmington Delaware. I am hoping to run sub-20 min as a minimum with a shot at 19:30 or better. I am looking forward to racing. ice baths today and tomorrwo should be good for recovery and getting my legs ready to go at it.
a nap is on the agenda for today too. looking forward to that as well.
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