4 miles
river road, north/south
85 degrees / dew point: 72
Last night, I planned to do my run early in the morning, but when I woke up it was already hot so Scott and I decided to walk and get coffee instead. As we walked back on the river road trail, we realized that it didn’t feel too terrible. There was shade and a breeze and the humidity was lower. When we got home, we both changed, then went out for runs — I went at 10:15, Scott at 10:40. I was surprised at how fine I felt. I was hot, but I didn’t feel like I would faint or get heat stroke; I just felt like I was working hard. No anxiety about it — a mental victory! Was it because of my HRT patch? Possibly.
Almost all of my route was in the shade, which was by design; I wouldn’t have been able to run in this heat with direct sun. I encountered many walkers, a few bikers, 1 or 2 other runners, 2 big groups of kids — one on bikes, one on foot.
10 Things
- dappled light, jagged patterns of light on the trail
- kids on bikes in bright yellow vests
- 2 bikers stopped near the trail, recovering or fixing something on their bikes after climbing the franklin hill
- no bugs — no swarms of gnats encircling my face or single gnats trying to swim in my eye juice
- the crack north of the trestle is still blocked off — this stretch had the most sun
- passing a walker on the path in flip flops, near the rowing club — did they just finish rowing? probably
- a scooter on the edge of the trail, but not far enough on the edge — if I hadn’t been paying attention, I could have tripped over it
- air quality is good — no smoke from colorado fires this year!
- bright blue sky
- a flushed face, sweat-soaked shirt
swim: 1.5 loops (3 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
95 degrees
Wow, the water was warm! As another swimmer said to me, it’s like bath water. I tried to remember that and not swim too hard. Hot air temp + hot water temp = hot Sara, with no chance to cool down. No worries. I swam slow and steady. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left.
Great news: My shoulder didn’t hurt at all on the first loop, and it hardly hurt on loops 2 and 3, and now, an hour later, it doesn’t hurt at all. Hooray!
Not so great news: I sacrificed my other new nose plug to the lake. Treading water at the end of loop one, trying to adjust my nose plug and unfog my googles, the nose plug fell down into the murky depths. Oh well. These nose plugs were slightly too big: I had to adjust them almost every loop. Time to go back to the slightly more expensive ($7 instead of $2) nose plugs. I wish I could find the exact one that I’ve been wearing for more than 5 years, but they’re always changing things, making them “better,” and I don’t think they make the exact one I have now.
The water was calm on the way to Hidden beach, rough on the way back. It was also yellow and murky. I saw some of my bubble friends but no silver flashes. I got tangled up in a few floating vines, had to stop swimming as clueless paddle boarders crossed the swimming course.
images of the day: the wide arc of some swimmers on the other side of the loop, swimming back. What I saw: some splashes, a few caps, buoys, and a curved line. Also, the occasional swimmer, swimming down the middle, or crossing over to swim in the wrong direction. All these swimmers — their elbows and white foam and buoys — looked so far away. Distance is distorted in and on the water.