I ran 8 miles today on the indoor track at ISU. It was actually a little warmer than it has been, but I am sick of running all bundled up, so I ran indoors after I finished my last final exam this evening. The plan was to alternate directions on the track so that I was not going the same way the entire time, however I did not realize that the track team had practice until 6:00 pm, so I was stuck running on the upstairs track which is slightly smaller, has sharper corners (it is essentially a square with rounded corners versus an oval), has a harder surface (mondo downstairs, concrete with a thin layer of a cheap track surface upstairs), and has fewer lanes so that I am unable to change directions and run in the outside lanes.
To top things off I got excited due to the number of people on the track (and because it finally doesn't hurt to run as my back and leg have been feeling much better lately), and when a girl almost passed me at the beginning of my run when I was still running slowly, I quickly picked up the pace and before long I was running sub 5:30 pace with a HR of approximately 180bpm. Doing this without ever changing directions on the track mentioned above is a recipe for disaster, and before long I could feel blisters forming on the bottoms of my feet, and I could tell that my outside (right) leg was getting fatigued. I finally slowed down after running fairly hard for about a mile and a half, settling into a pace that was just slower than 7:00/mile. After 6 miles I was finally able to go run the last 2 miles of my run on the downstairs track, however as track practice was over I had to dodge all of the people that were playing basketball on the track (whoever thought of putting 20 basketball courts on an indoor track was completely out of their mind in my opinion, as they dominate the good track, leaving only the sub par facility to run on, while a track makes for a sub par basketball facility as well).
Total time for 8 miles was about 57:00 if I am remembering correctly, with an average HR for the run in the high 150's.
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