Well, my week (8-days) of crazy runs continued last night with an effort that started at 10:30pm and continued well past midnight. Since we were traveling back home from the beach early Saturday morning, I either had to get in my scheduled 14 to 16-miles last night or early this morning. Early this morning was less attractive, because I needed to be in Lebanon, TN (about an hour away) by 8:45am to preach.
I decided to head out about 10pm to try and avoid the heat as much as possible (It was 104º when we got home late yesterday afternoon). I reached out to Nathan via text, and unbelievably he was also interested in getting in a run. We ended up meeting around 10:25pm at the start of Old Natchez Trace, and planned to run a little over 7.5-miles out-and-back on Old Natchez and Del Rio Pike.
Even at 10:30pm it was still almost 85º, though fortunately the humidity was not very bad. However, there was absolutely no breeze stirring at all, which made it feel like running with a blanket wrapped around you. We started out very easy and by mile 6 had worked our pace down to 8:08. I honestly couldn’t believe how good I felt considering the heat and a full day of travel.
However, sometime during the 7th or 8th mile, Nathan asked if we could back off the pace a bit, because he was having trouble keeping his heart rate down. We took a short break at the turn-around spot, and then headed back at about an 8:45 pace. After two more miles, Nathan said that he just didn’t have it tonight and needed to walk. Unfortunately with an out-and-back route there isn’t much opportunity to take a shortcut back. I told him that I would run out the remaining 6 miles and then head back in the car to pick him up.
Even though I was already feeling pretty good, this gave me a little bit of an extra push to pickup the pace so I could get back and pickup Nathan. I was honestly a little worried about him, but knew that he was smart enough not to push himself too hard, and it would be better for me to go grab the car than to stay with him and walk.
For those remaining 6 miles I did two in the low 8:00s, two in the 7:50s, and two in the 7:40s. All of these miles felt very comfortable, and other than being really HOT, I continued to feel really good all the way to the end.
I headed back down the route in my car to pickup Nathan and found him after about 3-miles. He said that his heart rate had come back down, and we both agreed that he was probably dehydrated. I hate that Nathan had a bad evening, but am grateful for his willingness to come out there with me, and that I felt so good on a very warm night.
In total I finished 15.36-miles with an average pace of 8:16 per mile. Since this was the last run of June (and technically the first one of July), this marked the completion of my biggest mileage month ever with just under 213-miles completed.
Beast Mode…ON!