Roulette Wheel/Roll The Bones

 " What's the deal? spin the wheel if the dice are hot take a shot, play your cards, show us what you've got What you're holding, if the cards are cold don't go folding Lady luck is golden she favours the bold that's cold, stop throwing stones the night has a thousand saxophones so get out there and rock and roll the bones" Roll The Bones-Rush

Another week when trying to get out and run was very much  akin to roulette or a crap table, spin the wheel, roll the dice and hope luck is on your side......Mercifully by Thursday Heatwave #3 had come to an end so the odds of a Friday morning 10 mile run looked good, I had hoped earlier in the week to get out for another 8 miler however after  a sleepless night due to the hot and humid conditions the 5.30am alarm was was greeted w/ a " not today" as I attempted to fall back asleep for another 90 mins b4 getting up for work......

Friday July 19th well at least the weather Gods were on my side  Cecily Tynan on #6 News had said on Thursdays weather forecast that Thursday would be the coolest evening in the past two weeks which lent itself to a good nites sleep and the odds of me answering the 5.15am alarm for a 10 mile run were favourable

Out the door just gone 5.30am, this was unchartered territory for yours truly, I'm not accustomed to getting up at 5.15am or running 10 miles at 5.30am but "needs must" I wanted a 10 miler and Friday represented better odds of getting it than the weekend if I was willing to get up at such an ungodly hour, I was buoyed by the fact the air was cool and despite being b4 the official Sunrise dawn had shed enough light that I wasn't running in the dark

According to the much used of late Weather app on my phone 6am was going to be 68 degrees and 68% humidity...this was important since when I reached South St bridge and the usually trust Peco Tower was displaying time and temperature  it said 12.30am and 72 degrees......if the time was cockeyed I had to guess the temperature was also.......!!!

My target time was 1.30.00 off 9.00 min mile pace, I clocked 1.29.28 off 8.57 mile pace, which while pleasing I went into the run telling myself all that mattered was getting the 10 miles sub 1.30 was an added bonus my splits were:8.39-8.56-9.08-7.36?-8.51-9.00-9.16-9.14-8.55-9.53

I put a question mark next to mile 4 it wasn't a 7.36 split the cloud cover was effecting the Garmin as it's prone to do mile 4 should come in at Lloyd Hall at the start of Boathouse Row and I hadn't reached  there when mile 4 popped up so I tacked a bit extra after mile 5 b4 making the turnaround to level it out

Given this was my first 10 miler in eleven weeks since the Broad St Run I was pleased w/ the fact I really didn't have to dig deep over the final 2 miles, maybe knowing I still had to go to work meant there was no margin for error, along those lines I realized this morning that while getting up at 5.50am and out the door ay 6.05am for 5 mile runs was doable b4 work now when I need longer runs I need to revert back to evening runs, weather permitting, I've penciled in next week as the return  to that but it will depend on the weather, but if not next week hopefully the week after as we begin August

 For the record I did run on Saturday but it only ended up being a 2 mile run  at 16.14.9 off 8.07 mile pace w/ spits of 7.38-8.35, I went out a tad too aggressively  in the opening mile and it caught up to w/in the next half a mile so I swung back to tack on the .5 and called it 2 miles

T-14 till Dublin, hence the need to resume evening double digit runs hopefully 10-12 miles 3 evenings a week while using the weekend to continue to extend my long run, I'm hoping next Saturday will be 12 miles which if I can get 2 or 3 10 milers in during the week should be a bit easier.....again  this is all prevaricated on the heat and humidity which hasn't gone away it's just lurking in the long grass....