Perfect temperature

Distance 41km [total: minimalist 136.5km: Barefoot 1128.4km] Week 11

Monday, 14-Mar. 2km
Monday is a public holiday here in South Australia and its celebrating a horse race, the Adelaide Cup, not that I have much interest in horse racing and betting but it is nice to have a day off.
It was a warm day today, up around 30C. I didn't go on any long runs today just some laps on my local field.
I didn't even take my stopwatch. I ran 5 laps at a pace that left me gasping for breath after each lap. I had a rest of around 3-4 minutes between laps to let my heart rate drop.
After the loops of field I did some Pose drills along with some 80m sprints.
I would guess I would have been out for around an hour in total.
It was tough work in the heat and great to finish at the end.

Wednesday, 16-Mar. 8km
8km run along the road and beach.
I don't know why, but at this time of year it seems that the tide is always high at around the time I am running along the beach, that is about 5.30pm.The sand was soft and I felt a bit tired by the end of the run.

Friday, 18-Mar. 12.5km
For one reason or another, including laziness, I have not run home from work since last year.
I do tend to choose Friday as the day I get my car serviced, book appointments that require I drive into work.
Friday is the only day of the week when I don't have an allocated car park at work and so I have to park on the street and am at the mercy of the very enthusiastic parking inspectors.
Anyway, today I did manage to bring my gear in and ran home.The weather was good, about 23C and cloudy.
My running felt much better than I remember it being the last time I ran home. No stopping at all except to remove the VFF's once out of the city.
It always takes me a while to re-adjust once the VFFs come off and the bare foot hits the bitumen, my feet are sensitive but this is probably a good thing as it makes me more cautious.
The feet made it back in perfect condition.
I got one comment from an older couple when I was running along the linear park, he saw my feet and said you'll get in trouble, I told him I was a professional :-)

Saturday, 19-Mar. 14.5km
A beautiful morning for running 16C, the tide at a low point so lots of flat wet sand to run on.
It's getting darker in the mornings now that we are in Autumn, soon we will come off Summer Time and back to standard, we gain an hour in the morning, 8am becomes 7am. I think we still have a couple of weeks before that happens.
I got to the beach at nearly dead on 8am, parking the car is easier now as not as many people want that early morning coffee by the beach.
The jetty to jetty run is much easier these days, I've run the distance several times now and my stamina must have built up.
Now my challenge is the longer 17.5km run, I may try that on alternate weeks.
There was a big surf life saving carnival on at the Semaphore end of the run, there must have been well over 1000 people on the beach, it was quite a surprise as usually you only see one or two people up here.
I felt quite fresh when I got to the jetty and began my run back, even on the way back I stopped for a couple of minutes only.
I covered the distance in 1:25:52 a good time, probably my best over the distance (barefoot that is).
I wonder what it is going to be like when the winter cold comes back, will I be able to still do the long distances?

Sunday, 20-Mar. 4km
 I did my short faster training, after a warm-up jog of 0.5km I ran south from Grange to Henley and managed a time of 9:56m on the return I managed 10:10m. There was plenty of flat wet sand to run on this morning, only the usual amount of dodging canines that were racing around on the beach.

Neil