How to describe my run this morning

It was not like this.  Au contraire.

The dog wouldn't even get moving.  After a lot of coaxing, he left the bed...and I gave up and considered starting a mental Cyber Monday list with a CO meter.

Company has thrown us off our routines: he hasn't been getting his massages.  And I've realized that I haven't taken iron supplements for almost a week.  Plus, though I told our guests the kitchen rules (basically, keeping wheat products off the stuff I use, including towels and J-cloths), it's hard to remember this.  Plus we ate out a few times and, though most of what I ate was oysters and salads, I was tired of that salads by the last place, and they didn't have oysters, so I had grits.  I'm not feeling bad, just kind of run down.  I slept over 12 hrs a couple of nights ago.

Anyway, no dog: tempo run.  It was not like this.  Temp was ok 7-8 C (it's supposed to go up to 27 C on Friday), and there weren't too many cars out then and some of them made room for me, which is nice.  I still went on the shoulder except at the very end when a car pulled completely over into the opposing lane well in advance, before I had a chance to go back on the pine needles.  That made my path clear.  I had no qualms about staying on the road.  THANK YOU, super nice grey station wagon (Subaru?) driver!!  Plus, I was able to stay on the asphalt up the worst 2 hills, which was amazing.

3 sluggish miles, 22:21.  That's more my (lack of) speed.  It would help, though, if I did at least one tempo every week instead of just staying in this jog trance.  I've been lazy for months--yeah, I've developed a thick jog trance and I love it, but it wouldn't kill me to push a little sometimes.  But I'm not training for anything, sort of: I'm still on a waitlist for a January ultra and I'll do a long run in about two weeks for that just in case.  Fortunately, since I ended up running the other ultra, I won't be too gutted if I don't get in.  My main regret would be not knowing how many times I would've tripped.

Yeah, I went back into the forest on the way home and it was not like this.  I was sapped.  Total: 1 hr, 25 minutes of suckage.  It was good practice.  If I get into that ultra, I'll have to go up that long sandy hill 14 times, and after 6 or 7 times, I'll be tired.   And I'll have to make it through that tough rooty section 14 times.  I handled it ok today, but I let my guard down and snagged my foot on something later on--but didn't fall!  I tore my shoe and bruised my foot--but didn't notice either until I got home.  My foot is fine.  My shoe will be fine with a bit of duct tape. 

And then, weights.  Light power cleans to warm up.  They were not like this.* The garage is uninsulated, and I'd thought that the 30+ C days were troublesome, but turns out when it's too cold, I can't even get a proper grip.  The first rep, I couldn't get the bar up; the second rep, I got it up but couldn't get it onto my fingers at the top--it was snagged in my palm somehow.  That kind of hurt.  That was that.  Sucks to bail on an easy weight.  I went into the house and did some pushups and pike situps.  Maybe I can find an old pair of mittens that won't tear.  Maybe I'll have more energy next time.

Maybe the next run will be like this.

* Edit: by the way, the sound engineer here is a wizard--I used to spend hours and hours and hours with period instruments.  I know how lush they can sound in the right environment, but this surpasses superior acoustics.  And props to the harpsichordist.  Handel gave him only one written line of music and he had to extrapolate from there--so thick, dude! And yet some nice delicacy too when needed in the 2nd section, which sounds more like Lascia ch'io pianga than the next movement of the concerto, but, hey, folks switched things up all the time back in the day, and trunk arias don't get much classier than that (well, until they pimped up the ending in the movie, LOLZ, but folks did that all the time back then too).   Man, sometimes I really miss the tunes.