Three Runs, Three States - Week Five

Okay, I'm running a little behind since I just finished my week seven runs...more posts coming soon!

Training week five was spend on the road for business, visiting our plants in such scenic locations as Indiana and Oklahoma.

Our group was very multi-cultural.  There were team members from the United States, Canada, Poland, France, Spain and Brazil.  Towards the end of the week of hanging with these guys, the voice in my head was starting to speak with a non-native accent.  However, outside of the thick accents and occasional arguments in another language, I found the foreigners an entertaining group to be around.  In particular, I noticed that their humor made the translation quite easily.

I actually had fun on some parts of this trip...and sometimes maybe a little more than was advisable (my alcohol tolerance pretty much doubled between Sunday and Thursday).  In Oklahoma, three of us shared a car.  We told another industrial engineer that he was going to be our chauffeur for the trip.  He didn't believe us until we got to the car and handed him the keys.  We made him drive almost the whole time (he was going to try to give me the keys one night...right after the tequila shots).  I heckled his navigation skills and occasionally referred to him as "Jeeves."  I was big into making friends on this trip..

Indiana - Speedwork

10 x 400 m

Since most of my tour of the town featured slums, I was pretty happy to find a greenway on a college campus for my early morning speed workout.  Of course, about halfway through the run it started pouring and lightning, which at least cooled it off from the oppressive heat and humidity I'd started my run with.  Remind me never to transfer to that location...that plant doesn't have air conditioning.

Oklahoma - "Tempo"

I can't, in good conscience, call this a tempo run considering the pace was slower than most of my long runs.  But considering that the night before had featured a round of tequila shots and several rounds of beers, I figured getting up early and running five miles at any pace was an accomplishment anyway...

This run also featured lightning but fortunately in Oklahoma you can enjoy the light show from the safety of miles away.

North Carolina - Long Run

I flew home on Friday night.  I was inspired (by the pending expiration date on my class pass) to get up for hot yoga on Saturday morning.  After that, the jet lag caught up to me and my motivation became pretty much non-existent.  I finally scraped together enough energy to get out the door on Sunday night and headed to a nearby greenway.  The greenway has a very secluded feeling, even though it must be very close to houses throughout, there are some parts where you can't see anything else besides the swamps...which isn't such a great thing when the sun sets about halfway through your run and the trail is empty.  I was about two miles from the end when I finally decided to get off the trail and run through the neighborhoods.  In order to get back two miles, I had to detour four.  But that did get me the full fourteen miles I was supposed to be doing this week.