Very nice but WARM run

I didn't fall asleep till 3:30, slept only lightly and fitfully and it was nearly impossible to drag myself out of bed - I snoozed the alarm several times before finally getting up shortly before 10. I was pretty set on running sooner rather than later, though I do find it a mental strain to do it as the first thing, but I managed to get out the door around 11 and had an entirely satisfactory one-hour run.

It is HOT out there! I was surprised by how warm and overheated I felt, but now that I check the Times website I see that it is actually 82 - I was guessing that it was mid-70s and that I just don't have good heat acclimation. Very clear to me as I was running (it is a hot run, there is no shade for most of the way) that though it is less enjoyable and certainly slower, it will be extremely good for me in coming weeks to do warm runs as they present themselves - the mental and physical aspects of desensitization to heat are both important, and it is the best way to prepare for the possibility of a warm race day.

Two really spectacular bird sightings, by the way (if I see someone looking at something I stop and ask what it is and look too!) - a beautiful cormorant fishing in the Hudson, and then, most spectacularly, a red-tailed hawk sitting prominently on a streetlamp between the river path and the West Side Highway! It was spectacular - the gentleman who pointed it out to me said that it was the mother and that if I looked carefully I would see her nest and babies a little further down, but really I can only see things like that when I can follow the line of sight of someone more knowledgeable...

(Also amazing, in a slightly more gruesome vein: a HUGE dead fish - like, at least three feet long and gleaming silver scales and fins - floating close to the shore, with a gull hacking Promethean hunks from its side!)

I'll swim later, if logistics permit, and have my long bike with Lauren tomorrow. I'd like to do a two-hour run Sunday morning before heading to NJ for a family picnic, and will set alarm accordingly, but will make the judgment as to whether it's wise when I see what impact if any tomorrow's ride has on the lungs, which are still obnoxiously and obtrusively full of JUNK....

By the numbers:

1:00:44
5.36mi. (11:19/mi. avg pace)
avg HR 144, max HR 156

zone 1: 6:00; zone 2: 44:21; zone 3: 8:09 (I note that in warm weather it is very difficult for me to stay out of zone 3 after about forty minutes, and that late afternoon and evening temperatures in Coeur d'Alene on race day are likely to have a significant impact on what pace I can maintain)