El Diablo Has Arrived!

Summer came in this week with the usual 100's that you normally  get for the month of June. So, my running keeps getting later and later in the evening. Sometime in July, we usually start to get monsoon rains in the afternoon that cool things to the high 80's, but that is at a minimum, a good month or so away. On Monday I hit the gym and did my weight workout and thirty minutes of spinning on the recumbent. Doing more and more sprints, and ending up a little farther along with each ride. I am closing in on 9 miles of sprint equivalent in that half hour, and that is my goal. Tuesday I did a long run of 12 kilometers. Was back sore afterwards, and much of the next day. Wednesday was a gym repeat. Thursday I ran 8K with 5 by 3 minutes with two minute recoveries starting at 10K pace and finishing at 5K pace. Friday was supposed to be a gym day, but Chris called to ask if we could run together after he got out of school. This was his first run in 5 weeks from his plantar issues, and my job was to run next to him and yell at him to straighten his spine, lean forward, and shorten his stride so he was running midfoot. It was 97 degrees and he wanted to only run a half hour (luckily!) on my dirt track, so we did 5 laps and covered 5K in exactly 33 minutes. I was absolute toast from that. On Saturday the gym was closed for a competitive event, so I waited until 7:30 to go out (we hit 100!) and ran easy until sunset, and then ran a 14 minute tempo interval that was planned to be 20, but the heat just ate me up. Not at all heat acclimated as yet. Today I cooked my brain for an hour and a half in the sun doing yardwork and watering, and plan to go out at around 7:30 again just to do an easy 6K. That will give me 39 kilometers for the week, and 5 days of running. Back handled all the runs except the long one. When I try that again next week, will try to wear my most cushioned shoes. As I said before, don't have any races, sans one evening 5K on the 4th of July weekend that I would do only if my back felt excellent, so no reason to push myself much this summer.
On my Thursday run, I was on the bike trail completing my last mile near sundown, when I looked down and there was a damn rattler spread out across the bike path enjoying the heat from the asphalt, and I freaked and jumped into the road. A guy in a white landscaping truck coming at me, pulled over, and I pointed out the rattler, and he grabbed a hoe from the bed of his truck, walked over, and chopped the head off. He threw the hoe back in his truck bed, and said "have a good one". I would be scared shitless to do that. When I told Deb the story, she told me that she had read that the venom in the fangs is still toxic for an hour after the snake is dead.....I said, do you think that I would go anywhere near the sucker to find that out? I hate those freakin' snakes!