Trying to log those miles

The smoke is back blanketing the NorCal valley, so it gets tough in trying to get the miles done. Over the 4th we headed up to our cabin for a respite from the heat. It was in the 40s in the morning and heated up to the mid-80s. Perfect weather. We also got three days of wakeboarding in! and we were joined by 4 other families, with whom we spend the majority of our weekends with anyway due to all of our kids play soccer together. It was a lot of fun.

I decided to go for a little 5k run at 5,500 ft elevation. I was going to hammer out a 10k, but some friends decided to join me and I didn't want to leave them alone on a course that they never ran so we all ran the 5k together. Basically it was an uphill bomber, out and back. My friends were saying that they've never run a hill like that before, but were very excited to finish it. They ran/walked but finished, which is what counts!

I had a killer fitness workout on Monday, just a total burner doing 4 sets of three exercises each for my chest, and back, with at least 12 reps; finished with a doozy ab workout, hanging leg lifts with ROM of knees hitting elbows, 4 sets of 12-15 each. If you haven't tried these, I highly recommend it. Followed by a good stretch. Today I needed a run but the smoke was choking. So I ran a 10k on the treadmill at the gym. I can't stand running on the treadmill. I did the Alpine course and kept playing with the grades and speed, even hitting 15% grade for a minute or too at 8+ mph. That's is when lactic acid pretty much took over and it forced me back to a 7% grade at about 4.5 mph. Once the legs got "breathing" again, I kept on hitting them arrows. The good thing is that I ran the 10k in just over 49 minutes. It would have been nice to finish it around 45 minutes, but I messed up the programming on the speed and it started the build up too slow.

I hope the smoke clears soon so that I can get back out on the road. I also hope all the firefighters are safe out there, brother and brother-in-law included!