There’s nothing quite like leaving your house in the early light, wondering if the weather will hold, and heading out on a long run. The air is still chilly, but at this time of the year, you know it will be almost too warm by the time you finish. Living in the country as I do, I also have a good amount of apprehension about what I might run into while on my run.

First there are the dogs. They are country dogs and hunting dogs – they protect their farms. Sure, some of them are nice. But some of them are in 10 foot chain link cages. And I’m glad they are, because they do not look or sound nice.

Then there are the other things – moose, mountain lion, and while it’s unlikely, it’s possible – bear. I’m more worried about the bear and moose while I’m trail running. Running by cow-filled, golden fields listening to the trickle of water early in the morning, I’m only too aware that it would be a prime location for mountain lion to have a morning stroll down by the river.

But as always, I didn’t run into anything unexpected except some horses outside their fence. I probably never will.

I think this apprehension is good – it keeps me from getting too comfortable prior to my run, and makes every run a new experience from me. Not getting too comfortable before my run will help come race day, when, no matter what, I’m going to be nervous. And as for every run being a new experience, making sure running, and especially your planned runs, don’t get boring can be a real challenge for runners. Having a running buddy or a running group is a good solution for this.

A good playlist with an adequate amount of run-time is also a good solution. With this, however, I take out one headphone while running outside. It helps to enjoy the sounds around you, plus it’s important to be aware of your surroundings. If that mountain lion ever is there, I certainly want to be able to hear it coming. And you don’t want to be surprised when the truck pulls by you at 60 miles an hour – you want to hear it coming.

When I’m running in the city, I run between fire hydrants. I’ll pick one, and run faster from that hydrant to the next, and then take it easy until the next one, repeating this for the mid-section of my run or until my brain gets distracted by something else.

My scheduled run for yesterday and moved to today was 6 miles at a 10:40 per mile pace. I did about 6.2 miles at closer to a 10:20 per mile pace. It was a beautiful morning. One week of training down, twelve to go.

Let’s establish something. I am not one of those runners who will only go outside in perfect weather. While I do prefer it, I’ll run in wind, rain, or snow. I have appropriate pants, jackets, hats to run in all sorts of weather, and have run in all sorts of weather. What I will not do is run in any situation where I think there might be lightning.

First of all, I’m clumsy, and hearing lightening while I’m running could seriously make me fall on my face. Second, I refuse to be a runner who gets struck by lightning. Especially after reading a couple articles like this or this. It would probably never happen, but I prefer not to find out.

That’s a very long lead in to tell you I didn’t do my planned workout today. I was all ready to do my planned 6 miles and looked outside. On one side of my house there was a pretty nasty storm with visible lightning. On the other side there was an almost equally nasty looking storm, no visible lightning, but threatening. I really didn’t want to miss my workout, but I didn’t want to do it inside.

Went to the gym and ran 30 minutes easy.

I’m going to rearrange the next few days. I’ll get up early, do my 6 miles tomorrow, and make Monday easy.

Today is a rest day. As Fridays should be.

I’ve gotten several running related emails today. One was about the PF Chang’s Rock & Roll Marathon & Half-Marathon in January, offering a sweepstakes for entry fee, lodging, food, VIP stuff, etc. Don’t worry, I entered.

The second one I got was a very touching and thoughtful email. My first half-marathon was put on by the folks at Everyone Runs, Everyone Walks in Tucson a couple of years ago. Email as follows:

“Dear Friends of Everyone Runs, Everyone Walks:

Yesterday I watched a story on CNN about depression among the unemployed and how exercise somewhat helps to alleviate the low feelings.  With that in mind, I would like to extend an invitation to up to 25 unemployed people to run or walk at no charge in our September 26 Catalina State Park Trail Run.  Simply send me an email to _____, and I will respond to the first 25 with a free entry.  Please don’t be shy.  I really want to do this for you and our community in this unfortunate time.”

Really, I am so touched by this. How absolutely wonderful of them to realize entry fees can be prohibitively expensive!

(If you are in the Tucson area, unemployed, and actually want the email address to ask for this, please let me know).

On my schedule for tonight was ’40 minutes run, either interval or Kara Goucher’. ‘Interval’ and ‘Kara Goucher’ being what I call two of my Nike+ workouts downloaded from iTunes. The Interval workout is actually ‘Increase Your Speed I’, narrated by none other than Alberto Salazar…

For those of you who are normal, Alberto Salazar is a very famous running coach. Chris always needs to remind me that runners or coaches who I think are famous are really people no one has ever heard of. Me? Huge fan of Kara Goucher. Chris says ‘who’? (Kara Goucher, of course, is the narrator of my other 40 minute workout).

Workout goes like this:

10 min warm-up, 4 minutes @ 60% of your maximum effort, 4 minutes recovery, 3 minutes @ 70% of your maximum effort, 3 minutes  recovery, 2 minutes @ 80% of your max effort, 2 minutes recovery, 1 minute @ 90 – 95% of your maximum effort, 10 minutes cool down. A total of 40 minutes.

It’s tough, don’t get me wrong. But the toughest time is the first. Or the second. After that, you get into the swing of how the workout works and makes you feel. I concentrated very hard today on making sure that my warm-up was slow and deliberate, not overdoing it before my intervals.

I don’t know how well I did on most of the intervals – during the 3 minute section I actually forgot I was supposed to be going fast. Ooops! But it was only for a few seconds. Let me tell you though, that 1 minute section was mine tonight. I owned it. I had people turning their heads at the gym watching me soar around them on the 1/12 of a mile track. Okay, maybe that was just my imagination. But that’s how fast I felt like I was going!

Let’s be clear about this – I’ve never been a swimmer. It’s just not me. Growing up I never had enough body fat to float, and swimming just never stuck.

Don’t worry, I’m safe in the water. I can tread water like nobody’s business.

Given that it’s great cross-training, in the last year or two I have given swimming a really good try. I’ve learned many things – good goggles are imperative, a good swim cap keeps water out of your ears, and a nose plug, while being helpful, is really hard to get put on correctly and comfortably. I need a new swimsuit, but that will just have to wait until I can afford it.

So, my scheduled workout for tonight was a swim.

I was tempted to skip a workout altogether, as it was the day after a hard workout and I had scheduled cross-training. Plus I was already home as Chris had an eye appointment this afternoon. I was also tempted to do tomorrow’s 40 minute run. But, I convinced myself to stick to the schedule. It’ll pay off later.

You know, the 30 minute swim (broken into 10 minute segments because I’m really not a swimmer) wasn’t so bad. I did 28 lengths of the pool, I think, so 14 laps. Assuming it’s a 25m pool, that’s 700 meters. Could have been worse.

It was a slow night at the pool, so they also had all the fun ‘lap swimmer’ pool toys out – kick boards, flippers, and hand paddles. I gave the paddles a try, as they are supposed to help with your stroke (guess what? they did!). I also gave the kick board a go, as doing it backwards with the board behind your head is supposed to be killer for your abs.

Overall, we’ll call this workout a success, despite the fact I still feel like a fish out of water in the pool and it took nearly half the workout for me to even remember how to correctly move my arms during my stroke.