Sunnier Trails

 A repeat of Wednesday's run, only clockwise. It was mostly cloudy, so even though temps were in the mid-90's, I went out around 10am, slowly jogging the Cactus Forest trail to the road, then back on the Shantz trail.

Joined a group ride, out the door at 6:05AM, down to Le Buzz by 6:25 to meet up with a small group doing 1 hour up Mt Lemmon (from MP 0). There was a considerable amount of cloud cover, but it was in the upper 80's. I made it 7 miles, taking a few brief stops. Sweated like crazy and had to extensively re-hydrate throughout the rest of the day. 

Significant cloud cover brought some slightly cooler temps. At 11AM, I ran 3.7 miles in Saguaro East National Park, starting from the Broadway Trailhead, going south on the Shantz Trail to the road. The temperature was in the upper 90's but I was slowly jogging, so it took a while before the sweat really started pouring. About half a mile on the road, then back to the car on trail (taking a short break when the sun came out). Then at 5pm, I rode for about an hour on the bike, doing Freeman Hill. The sun came out a little but thankfully I didn't get too fried.

 Monday and Tuesday with a similar pattern: getting about 7 hours of sleep, waking up around 7:30AM, getting out for a short 3.3 mile run at 8:30AM in the Civano/Sierra Morado neighborhood area (which provides a lot more shade than around my house). Slow E-Z pace, lots of heat, definite increase in humidity (there were clouds, wind, and lightning last night).

Finally a change in the weather pattern that has been in place for about two weeks; the heat dome moved a bit allowing some moisture to creep in, bringing some morning clouds and, as.a result, a much-needed cool down. Got up around 7:30, walked the dogs around 8:30, and went for a ~90minute bike ride at 9:30AM. First ride after getting tubeless installed. When I got this bike three years ago the rims were tubeless-ready, but it was sold with clinchers (inner tubes). I've gotten two flats on this bike, so it is not a frequent thing, but if I can get it to five or ten times less frequent, then that would be really nice. Plus, you can run lower pressures and have less rolling resistance on typical road surfaces. So now I'm going from 80 psi on 26's to 60psi on 28's. It felt really smooth.

 Actually made it out early; up by sunrise (5:30AM) and felt reasonably good... or so I thought. Some kind of muscle tightness was inhibiting my right knee, and even after stopping to stretch a few times, I couldn't really get good motion going, so stopped after 2 miles. Went for a quick swim afterward to try and loosen things up.