From One Extreme to the Other

Sunday was spent recovering from the Sulphur Springs run, but by the end of the day I figured I would take the advice of a recent article I had read about recovery. The article was basically one persons opinion that after a strenous race or hard long run, that person would go for a thirty minute run the day after no matter how he felt. It would help flush out the muscle soreness. So Sunday night I went for a nice short 3.5k run, it was very humid and the first part of the run were rather dificult, but when I was done I was glad I had done it.
On Tuesday I would take part in the Relay for Stronger kids at Exihibiton place in Toronto as part of one of the 65 Hydro One teams that took part. Unfortunately our team only had 3 members so Jeff and myself would complete three of the 2.5k laps and Deanna would do the regular 5k. As it turned out we would all do better than expected. Even thought the temperatures during the day were around 40C with the humidex, we all did better than expected. The temps were noticeably cooler near the lake which obviously helped but didn't lessen the sweat coming out of me.
Jeff ran the first 3 loops and kept a steady pace, he was aiming for about 42 minutes and we were surprised when he rounded the corner to the hand off area at 38 minutes. My turn and as usual in a race the first half a k are the worst, I feel out of breath and it feels hard. I settled into a decent pace just aimed to maintain that, I was looking for about 38 minutes myself. I passed my "buddy" Gary from Toronto Hydro taking part in the walk as I would again on the second lap. I was surprised to see that I was doing 4:30k on my Garmin and came in the first lap at about 11 minutes, I thought I would slow down here, but the second lap came in about the same time. It was on the second lap where my Garmin dropped dead. It has been struggling to keep a charge lately and I think it is no done like dinner. THe third lap I felt myself surge a bit, knowing it was the last lap. I finished very strong and came in at a very good 32 minutes or so. Deanna did the last 2 laps and was very happy with a 5 minute PB coming in at 26 minutes. A good day and we were 5th in our age category, Coed +35.
Wednesday nigh tis Running Room night and the usual suspects were there minus a few unusual suspects! We were doing the hospital route backwards whihc meant running up Owen to start. Running along Rose we crossed Duckworth, but instead of going up to the hospital Theo took us straight and through the subdivision, Ok! And on we went then done Cook, "where are you taking us Theo?" the group kept spreading out as the faster guys took off especially along Steel, I thought I wasn't slowing down at all but most of them were pulling away from me. I asked Rhonda what our pace was and we were doing about 4:30 pace. Along the lakeshore and along the railtrail I asked again and Rhonda said we were doing around 4:25, Roger was running quite a bit faster as he had pulled away, good to see him running good tonight. We finihsed 10k in aobut 47minutes and change. A good dose of speed for the second night in a row, hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass, literally!!