Saturday Morning Long Run

Driving to the meeting location for the long run I checked the temperature...77 degrees at 6 am. It was supposed to cool down this weekend and weather.com shows the high being 91 today, lower than the 102 it supposedly hit yesterday.  I want to do some research on the affects of heat on running.  Yeah, I know I'm slower but I want to why?

There were a number of us today meeting at the Sinclair gas station and John, wanting to run longer, ran the 6 miles from the house to meet us.  He ended up running much longer than he planned because he ran with me for my whole run. The benefit to running to the meeting location and me driving is he can ride home in the car.

Going into my run I was a little worried.  Two days ago I could barely manage 3 miles because I was so tired and never snapped out of it.  I was afraid of a repeat.  Maybe chatting with other people in a group helped distract me but the run went really well and the 9.5 miles went by quickly and it wasn't too hot.  After the run we had breakfast at Vincents, which has a farmers market on Saturdays.  I love pizza for breakfast.

During my run I did think about my friend Lahcen and the going away party for him last night. Lahcen is moving to Morocco where his family is at and he's leaving his running family behind but with an open invitation to come visit him.  Lahcen is a fantastic runner and you can hear him coming on the track because he exhales loudly.  I always get fair warning to move over to lane two and let him pass.  Lahcen has a great saying that its always cooler in his lane.  He's not going to let heat be an excuse.  You'll be missed Lahcen.  This isn't a great picture but it is Lahcen and Coach Dean (John and I in the right side of the pic)