A Glorious Day for a Run in the Sun!

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in Southern California and so I decided to explore a new trail. With it being a new trail, I didn't want to explore it alone and so I took Brutus along for the exercise. Before this run he hadn't gone more than 4 miles ... I mapped out a 5.6 mile run ... I guess it was 6 miles if you count the warm-up/cool-down walk to and from the trail. So I brought plenty of water just to be safe.

Brutus and I before the run

We set out on the trail and man was I excited when I saw how pretty is it. It's away from the main road, surrounded by trees and next to the Newport Bay.

 

There were many other people on the trail. Some running/walking alone or with friends. Some biking. Others looked like they were on their lunch break as they donned business attire. There were even horses on the trail! I felt like I had left the city and found some kind of nature bubble.
Brutus did fantastic. There were a few times where he started to fall behind but there were also times when he was pulling me to go faster. We completed the 5.6 miles in 01:06:03. That is around an 11 1/2 minute mile which isn't bad. Especially considering I stopped to take pictures!  :)

I cannot wait to complete this run again! I am thinking that I want to do it tomorrow, but we will see how I feel. Today I did some cross training of bicycle and rowing ... but I also worked a double. But after a full nights sleep I just may be ready to hit Brown Trail again :)

Happy Running!

Okay ... Where is the pie?!

Because today is Thanksgiving, I figured the gym would be quiet, but to my surprise there were quite a lot of people there. The gym closed at 2:00pm today so I guess anyone that wanted to get a workout in had to do so early in the day.
I went in with the plan to just hit the 'quick start' button on the treadmill  and run until I felt I couldn't go anymore. But I didn't want to over do it so I hit 'manual' instead and entered in 60 minutes. I said to myself that as long as I got to 30 minutes I was good.
So I started with a 2 minute warm-up where I worked my way up to 5mph (12 minute mile). I did that for 30 minutes and then upped the pace to 6mph just for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. I then brought it back down to 5mph and continue until I reached 37 minutes. I was getting a little tired but at this point I knew I could reach the 60 minutes, so I did a 2 minutes and 30 seconds recovery walk at 3.6mph and re-hydrated a little.
The last 20 minutes consisted mainly of 5mph with 2 more sets of 6mph for 2 minutes and 30 seconds and a final cool down for 2 minutes.
As exhausted as I was, I felt accomplished. In 60 minutes, I ran 5miles and burned just over 400 calories. Somewhere just before the 30 minute mark I very much wanted to give up, but I am very glad that I pushed past that because it was clearly psychological. I not once felt out of breath and my legs didn't really burn or feel tired so I know for the future to check all those before calling the workout complete because chances are that it is just psychological and I could very much just keep going.
After that I did just 5 minutes of the rowing machine so that I would feel that I got some upper body work done.

So having done all that .... please pass me the largest slice of pie!!!  ;)