I hope everyone is enjoying the Summer and getting in some good workouts. I started the month off with a 20 miler and ended it this morning with a 17 miler, but actually those were the two longest runs of the month.
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| 20 Miler to Start the Month! |
I had some relatively "low mileage" weeks the first two weeks of July. I ran the 20 on July 1 and the main reason was that I had just gotten back from Asia and the weather felt so much better, 10 degrees cooler and much less humid. That would change by the end of the month but it really felt good at the time and was quite a contrast to what I had experienced on my two-week Asia trip weather-wise.
The second week was our family vacation down to Tennessee and I basically decided to just run whatever felt comfortable each day and let it go at that. We camped at Henry Horton State Park about 40 miles south of Nashville. We camped the whole week (Saturday to Saturday) and really enjoyed the amenities of the park. We had a nice 4 mile hike the first day we were there. Later we enjoyed the Olympic sized swimming pool, the golf course and the buffet lunch at the lodge. Each day we would travel back up towards Nashville to see the sites or other days to some of the more "local" attractions, such as Civil War sites, etc.
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| Visiting with Uncle Bob in Gallatin TN -- 91 Years Young! -- |
One day we even got to visit my 91-year old Uncle Bob up in Gallatin, just north of Nashville. He is quite an inspiration to me and my family. He lives on his own in an awesome house on a hill out in the country which he and my Aunt Mary Lee built back in the nineties. Aunt Mary Lee has since passed away, but Uncle Bob is still going strong. He takes care of the entire property by himself and insisted on fixing lunch for us the day we came, even though we offered to take him out to lunch. He showed me and the girls his model train set up in the basement and we also got to see his family of pet deer (wandering through the yard!) which now has a set of twins! He attributes his longevity to a good attitude, no prescription drugs (or a daily pill of any kind) and a good glass of wine each day! Not a bad regimen!
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| 11 Miler in Tennessee |
While in Tennessee, my runs were relatively short since I was waking up in the tent each morning and then negotiating the gravel road out of the campsite to some relatively busy roads and highways around Chapel Hill, where Henry Horton State Park is located. On my Tuesday run up Highway 99, I hit a really nasty patch of loose, sharp gravel and ended up with a deep bruise on the ball of my left foot. This sort of shortened the rest of my vacation runs although by Saturday I did work back up to an 11 miler once I discovered Highway 270 to the east of town, which offered smoother roads, less traffic and well, NO GRAVEL! Yeah!
Once back home in Indiana, I bumped the mileage back up to a 55 and then a 70 mile week but the monthly total of 215 still only ranked 4th for the year and nowhere near my record of 404 set last September...and I have NO plans of breaking that anytime soon. In fact, I'm not really too interested in records this year at all. Main reason is that I set them all too high last year and so now I'm just enjoying running whatever distance feels good each day.
I also signed up for two additional races this month. As most of you know already, I was already signed up for Albuquerque NM in October and Disney World, FL in January to complete my 50<4 (50 Sub 4) goal of running all 50 states under 4 hours. Well, now I went and added one more marathon in between these two. I signed up for the Indy Monumental in November as part of our church's marathon/half-marathon team raising money and awareness for World Vision and it's clean water for Africa project. (and yes, I'll be hitting you up for money soon!)
The other race I signed up for is special as well. It's only a 5K distance-wise, but it is special since it is part of the Annual Twinsburg Ohio Twins Day Celebration and I will be running as a team with my identical twin brother Dave. We will be there this coming weekend and will participate in many different activities while there including a twin golf outing. I'm also bringing along my 15 year old twin daughters Megan and Sarah and they are very excited. We've never done anything like this before and had fun shopping for identical clothes last weekend. Megan and Sarah aren't identical but they are getting into the twin-mania thing all the same! It should be a lot of fun.
Enjoy the Summer (even though the days are already getting shorter!),
Barefoot Dan
July Mileage = 215.94 miles (1360 so far in 2016)
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