A Hectic Race Week! (John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4)

Well, race week has come and gone! If you want to know the deets, race report here. As for the week itself, it was kind of a stressful one with a short-but-intense work trip and some unfortunate travel woes. That plus a bit of insomnia earlier in the week (no real reason, just run-of-the-mill "HI HELLO THIS IS YOUR BRAIN LET US SPIN WILDLY THROUGH ALL THE THOUGHTS UNTIL THE WEE HOURS" brain stuff) meant that I unfortunately spent a lot of it exhausted and sleep-deprived, and checked off the first unintended zero day of the year (fortunately, just an easy four miles, nothing that tragic).

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler Week 4 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 28.5 miles

🐌 Easy: 17.25 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 10 miles
🐎 Fast: 1.25 miles
(🏅 Race: 10 miles)

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Monday 2/26: a.m. strength.

Tuesday 2/27: 2.3 warm up, 10 x (1:00 fast / 1:00 jog), 2.25 cool down = 7 total. Woke up Tuesday really NOT feeling great, and the warm up for this run started off slow as ASS. The first couple of 1:00 "fast" strides were not pretty and I really kind of questioned if I should even be trying to do them. But I warmed up into them as things went on and after a while actually started to feel pretty good. Not fast, necessarily, but just comfortable and, y'know, fine, which is a good place to be five days before a race.

Wednesday 2/28: 5 easy + travel day. Down in SoCal briefly for work! There aren't a ton of great places to run near the hotel I usually stay it, but since it was only 5 miles, I was able to make it work & didn't have to resort to the dreadmill. As usual on work trips, I did not sleep well & got about 4.5 hours of sleep.

Thursday 2/29: 4 easy + fly home. For boring reasons that don't bear discussing, trying to get this run in before my flight home would've been cutting it closer than I'd previously thought. But then my flight ended up delayed for 2.5 hours, at which point I was already trapped in an airport with my suitcase, womp womp. All this meant I didn't get home until about 11pm, and still needed to pack for the race. So, another late night followed by an early morning Friday --> a second night of not-great sleep.

Friday 3/1: 30:00 easy + 4 x 100m 3 easy. My teammate picked me up at 1:30pm on Friday to make the four-hour drive to Redding. Nasty weather had been forecast all across the Bay Area for Friday and into the weekend, but luckily we were able to stay ahead of it for the most part. After picking up race bibs, we checked into our hotel & I went out for a shakeout. It was dark, COLD (30's), spitting, and SUPER windy, so I just made loops around our hotel block (clutching at my hat the whole time and desperately wishing I'd worn gloves). I did *not* feel good and also did not feel great about the weather, light, or footing, so I skipped the strides & called it good at three miles. 

Saturday 3/2: John Frank Memorial 10 Miler! 1.5 warm up, 10 race, 2 cool down = 13.5 total.

Sunday 3/3: Rest. I mean, like. I literally did nothing. Well, not literally nothing. I stayed in bed reading until like 11:30am, got up and ate, then went back to bed for a nap at 1:30pm and slept until 4:30pm, when I finally got up and showered, went grocery shopping, cooked dinner, and did a bit of laundry. Then back to doing nothing. 🤣 Ie, just about the best recovery day imaginable.

The kitties & I did a lot of this on Sunday, it did not suck

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• The Minders by John Marrs. In the mid-21st century, the UK government has selected five citizens with unique psychological characteristics to become “Minders”, storing the country’s most sensitive classified information in specially created DNA implanted in their brain. The system is believed to be much more secure than “hackable” online storage methods, and in return each of the five is given an opportunity to start their lives afresh. Alas this new innovative system may not be all it’s cracked up to be, and the Minders may find themselves threatened by outsiders as well as one of their own. 
• The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. Six magical young people (some recent college school grads, others more like mid- or late-twenties) are approached by a sort of distinguished magical gentleman (the “Atlas” in Atlas six) to attempt to qualify for initiation into The Alexandrian Society, a group of wizards that guard knowledge thought “lost” from the great civilizations of the past. The catch is that (for some reason) six candidates are recruited, but only five will actually qualify. This book and its characters were so annoying that I had to give it up after less than 100 pages. Characters don’t have to be “likable” to be good characters but it helps if you can muster *some* reason to care what happens to at least one of them, and I just could not. It really reads like it’s targeted at teenagers even though all the characters are twenty-somethings so maybe I’m just the wrong audience.
• The Goblin King by Katherine Addison. 18-year-old Maia Drazhar, youngest son of the elven Emperor, has lived his entire life in exile, both unneeded (as the youngest of four sons) and unwanted (as a half-goblin) by his father. But when said Emperor and half-brothers are killed in a suspicious accident, Maia suddenly finds himself on the throne and epically unprepared for both the political and social aspects of his new life. The story follows the new Emperor as he desperately tries to figure out his new role while unraveling the mystery of his family’s deaths, avoiding assassination himself, and generally trying to be a good, non-shitty ruler. A good read if you’re in the mood for smart, well-done, earnest and kind of sweet classic fantasy that isn’t overly complicated or violent.