The Sun Is Not Your Friend

Well I had a very nice weekend. I got to spend lots of quality time with family. It turned out that having the concert canceled wasn't all that bad.

I spent all day Saturday at my Grandma's farm helping plant rocks and flowers, chase chickens around and various other little things. I'd planned on getting my run (2 mile fartlek) in out there on the dirt roads. We got out there around 11 so I wanted to wait a while until it cooled off instead of running during the hottest part of the day.

We were pretty much finished with the work we needed to have done by around 6:30. So by the time I figured out where to turnaround for a two mile out and back and got my shoes changed it was about 7. It was by far the worse run that I've had. I probably started out a little too fast because that's what I do. I could hardly run anymore once it was time to turn around, I was completely dead. So from there on I had to throw in walks with the fast (which weren't really fast any more) and slow runs. I ended up with a time of 17.13. Which is a lot better time than it felt like it should have been. Maybe I turned around too soon and didn't actually run the too miles or maybe I started out a ton faster than I thought I did.

I'm pretty sure a couple of things contributed to the bad run. The first one is that I was in the sun all day and got a little burnt. The second one being that I ate breakfast at about 10 and didn't eat anything else until about 10 that night, I stayed pretty hydrated though.

I'm hardly ever in the sun. We don't have any windows at work so I don't get any sunlight that way. Because of my messed up sleep pattern (I'm planning a post about that sometime) I usually end up taking a little nap for a few hours after work and by then the sun is down. Even when I'm up after work I'm not outside because we don't have a yard or anything like that. So Saturday was pretty much the first time I've been in the sun for more than a few minutes since last summer.

Even with my lack of exposer to the sun I didn't think I needed to use sunscreen. I did leave my t-shirt on so I didn't fry my back though, although had I taken it off I would have used sunscreen. After awhile I could tell my neck was starting to burn so I put some on it, but it was too late. My right arm was also getting pretty red. I have no idea why just the right one got burnt, I wasn't in the same place all day or anything like that. Once I started running I could tell that the back of my legs were burnt. But it was okay because it only hurt every time shorts rubbed against them, and that only happened when I took a stride. Even if I wouldn't have been stupid and used sunscreen I never would have thought to put any on the backs of my legs.

As for the not eating all day thing, I do that a lot so I don't think that had nearly as much to do with the bad run at the sun did. My diet is horrible. The fact that I actually ate breakfast that morning is pretty surprising, I do that about three times a year. Since my sleeping is so messed up I usually take a nap at lunch instead of eating too. Then after work I'll snack on some chips or something until I fall asleep for my evening nap. By the time I get up Amy usually already ate something so I'll have a bowl of cereal of a salad and then snack on stuff off and on for the rest of the night until I go to bed (well, fall asleep for the night anyway).

So the moral of the story is wear sunscreen on all parts of your body that are not covered up and eat once in awhile.

We stopped by Lincoln Running Company on our way out of town today. They only had Nike heart rate monitors so I tried one of those one. I really liked how it fit so now I have to add that one to my list of ones to chose from. I picked up a couple pair of socks while I was there too (why does writing about socks make me feel like such a loser?). Ann highly recommend Features! Light, they are a thin sock that's wicks moisture. The most important feature is that they come in my size. So I went with those and they do feel better to run in than my normal ones.

This week is a real easy week to recover a little bit, just 7 miles spread out over 4 runs. I moved Sunday's 1.5 mile run to tonight and ran it on the treadmill so I could watch some of the Spurs game. It's amazing how easy it is to run at the right pace on a treadmill, I hit my 9 minute mile mark perfectly for a final time of 13.30. Since it's just an easy week I probably won't post about my runs much which will give me time to get some other posts I've been planning done.