Maddox Man

Monday, June 28, 2010

I finally made it back to the park after 48 hours off. Doesn’t sound so bad when I put it that way. It was soooo muggy, though, that I almost turned the car around to go home for a ride, instead. Then I started thinking about taking a dunk in Clear Creek at the completion of what would surely be a very sweaty run, which was enough to get me going. Besides…one hour of running and I feel great about my routine, but I feel like I have to go at least a couple of hours on the bike and since I had a lawn to cut, time was limited.

I started slowly, hoping the abdominal pain would have miraculously disappeared after only two days without running. Wrong. It was there, but as usual, the first ten minutes warmed it to the point that I could live with it for the rest of the run. The deer flies were particularly annoying… they seem to increase in ferocity directly proportional with higher percentages of humidity. Lovely. I killed a couple and left their pieces parts smeared on my head and back to discourage other members of the species…with little success. In fact, I felt a particularly painful bite on my arm and when I looked, was staring at a horsefly the size of a robin. I smashed him good, but not before he took his pound of flesh.

My body conceded to the heat and humidity. The run took a full four minutes longer than it had on the previous Friday, but I made it to the creek and plunged in. The water was running faster, cooler and higher as a result of last night’s storm, so I just floated and enjoyed it until my body had completely cooled. I climbed out and decided I’d done enough running and just walked the half mile back to the car, enjoying the rays of the evening sun filtering through the pines.

I returned home, cut the grass and walked next door to take a look at a couple of stumps my neighbor was trying to get uprooted. I grabbed my maddox and shovel and attacked the first one. It was out in less than four minutes. The second one had me going for the next hour, digging, chopping, pulling out dirt, moving gutters and just plain sweating. We called it quits around 9 p.m., the stump intact, but at least I’d gotten in a great upper body workout…and I can go back tomorrow for more. Life is good.

Run duration: 61 minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 140.

Calories burned during workout: 1025.