Hills and Rain

I almost lost a contact yesterday on my run down the Parkway. Running down the grade, facing west, the rain was coming at me horizontally. For moments at a time I closed my eyes to keep the lenses from washing away. For anybody who does not wear contact lenses, a little streak of panic rushes over you and your vision goes cloudy (like opening your eyes underwater) when fluid floats the contact off your eye momentarily.

The Parkway is good for hill work: ~.75 miles of big downhill, then a steady 1 mile+ climb up to the neighborhood via a wooded road. Aside from some traffic rushing by on the Parkway I did not see anyone else on the usually crowded pathway that neighbors walk before they head to Starbucks in the morning. The holiday and the rain must have kept them away. I really enjoy looking up on the hill and seeing the forest mixed with pacific madrone. Aesthetically, it is my favorite tree. The ponds, used to detain surface water coming off the neighborhood, is a great place to see birds in the cattails. In fact, there are cattails all over that hill; they seem out of place.

On the return, I contemplated doing my own stress test on the hill next week. I have never attempted to figure out my max heart rate. On a podcast earlier in the week, I heard about a 1/2 hour routine to assess heart rate zones. We will give it a shot soon - 20 minute warmup, 5 minute ladder, full-out on a hill, assess the pulse, and later, breakdown the zones. I know the local running store does it too - for a price. I will try my way first and see how close I come.

At work later, I wrote down my marathon schedule in a penciled grid-like calendar I created. 19 weeks! I have put it into an Excel spreadsheet before, but I do not think I am going to be to critical of my training for this upcoming race on May 3rd. Although my back feels better, I continue to work on it in yoga and crosstraining. I do, however, intend to keep a log as part of my running ritual.