SRM WEEK 9 OF 20: Upcoming Race Plans

So, this week started out rough, got better, then quickly slid back downhill. I ended the week with my worst long run in recent memory--the first half was fairly pleasant actually, but despite my casual pace the last three miles or so felt nearly as hard as a race, not to mention some nausea & lightheadedness.

Some pics from the first half of the run, before I wanted to shoot myself in the face:

Conservatory of Flowers

Down by the ocean

Eventually I even made a deal with myself that once I got to the last two miles I could stop every quarter mile for 30 seconds or so. (Yes, this sucked, but on the plus side, it does kind of serve as a good reminder of how much easier long runs have gotten for me over this last year.) I started the run later than I wanted to & finished pressed for time, so I also didn't do myself any favors by sprinting the last block, jumping into the shower for 30 seconds, frantically dressing myself, & rushing to a dinner party with friends while scarfing down a granola bar in the car. I was kind of a zombie through dinner, didn't eat enough carbs & definitely didn't drink enough water and probably too much alcohol.

To be fair, though, there was a crown roast. I mean come on.

This morning my body can't decide whether it wants water or salt or both, so I'm sort of alternating between chugging water and salty pre-made grocery store soup.

Anyway, moving on.

I found out last week that my July half, The Jungle Run, is cancelled for this year. After satisfying myself that there aren't any other races around that time that I'm excited to run, I went back to the Sunnyvale 10-Miler, which I'm running on June 28.

This race is part of the same series as the Foster City 10-Miler that I ran in January. Originally I'd been thinking I'd treat it the same as that race & just do it at marathon pace/effort, but now that I'm not racing anything else between then & SRM, I started thinking it might make sense to run it as an actual race. Because I haven't all-out raced anything since Mountains 2 Beach over two years ago, all my workout paces are super outdated, and it would be good to have a more accurate baseline in terms of my actual fitness now as I train for SRM. I won't be in tip-top shape, but I should have had a good 4-5 weeks or so of speed & tempo work under my belt, so with any luck, I *ALSO* won't flat-out embarrass myself.

I've never all-out raced a 10-miler before, so I didn't have a good sense of what I should be shooting for time-wise (though this is also hard because I don't really know what kind of shape I'll be in). According to the interwebz, my half marathon PR of 1:38 translates into a 10-mile time of ~1:13, which kind of gives me an absolute ceiling. Honestly, I don't think I'm going to get back to that level of fitness by three weeks from now, so I looked at equivalent times for half marathons in the 1:41-1:42 range & got right around 1:15. So for now, I think that's more or less my "A" goal: break 1:15.

Which means running 7:30's. Ie, run PR half marathon pace for 10 miles. Which is still pretty darn scary to think about right now. So I think maybe my strategy will be to start with 7:45's & see how that feels, & try to ratchet down from there. If I can't, my "B" goal will I think be to average 7:45 pace & finish in 1:17:30. My "C" goal, it seems, might as well be to beat my Foster City time of 1:19:22 (7:56/mile), and if I can't do that I'm going to be pretty sad because it means I'm nowhere close to being able to run a marathon at that pace (and unlikely to get there in 8 weeks).

~*~*~SRM WEEK 9 OF 20~*~*~

Grand Total: 38 miles

* 22 easy
* 1.75 speed
* 14 long

Monday: 4 easy.

Normally Monday is my post-long run rest day, but since we did a 2.5 hour trail run on Saturday, I took Sunday off, & was missing karate due to work travel, I wanted to squeeze in a little physical activity. Apparently my legs were still worn out from Saturday because this was the hardest 4 mile run I've done in a while. It felt really difficult to keep good form & was significantly slower than my easy runs have generally been lately.

Tuesday: Rest.

Or rather, work travel. I could have done an easy treadmill run but wanted to save my legs for a solid speed workout on Wednesday when I got home. Which was fine because I was pretty busy with work stuff anyway.

Wednesday: 2 warm up / 6 x 1200m / 2 cool down = 10 speed

Back on RunCoach & it feels so good!

Thursday: 4 easy

Oh man. I literally cannot remember the last time I felt this terrible on an easy run. It was supposed to be six, but less than a mile in my legs felt like lead & I'm pretty sure I only made it two out & two back out of sheer force of will.

Friday: 2 warm up; 30:00 @ GMP; 2 cd 6 easy

Usually when I have a bad run the next one is much better, but not this week. This run felt almost the same as the day before (maybe sliiiiightly better? Certainly not by much) & when less than a mile in I was struggling to hold a 10:30 pace I knew there was just no way GMP miles were happening. I managed to crank out the six easy but that was hard enough. The only cause I think of is the fact that I did a harder run than usual on the heels of a work trip & normally would have had a rest day after it. Still, these two runs seemed pretty dramatically awful, even considering all that.

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: 14 long

Buh.

All I really want out of Week 10 is to feel not like crap for more than one run!! #life goals