Grand Total:
48 miles + 3:00:00 strengthSince I raced hard on Sunday 9/4, this week was just a bunch of easy running. It's so funny how I felt fine after the race, mostly fine for the rest of the day, kind of tired on Monday, and then by Tuesday & Wednesday I finally felt the full effect of all-out race exhaustion in my legs.
Blogger land leads me to believe that this is the part where I say "Ohhhh, it was so WEIRD to have a cut-back week after all these 45+ WEEKS, I felt like I BARELY RAN, I was going STIR CRAZY doing normal-people things instead of running a BAJILLION miles" but eff that noise, you guys. Other than the race (which, yeah, was awesome), this week sucked balls and I am not too proud to tell you about it.
Somewhere during this process I fell head-over-heels giddy in love with this track, which in short order became Angela's Official Theme Song for Race to the End of Summer 10K 2016:
Seriously. So great.
You guys, I am feeling so jittery and nervous and just plain EXCITED about this race.
It has been so long since I've run a 10K where I actually thought I had a chance at a good race. I mean, it will not be a PR race; after all I've only got 3 weeks of speed work in the legs and won't really be tapering. BUT, I've been lifting a LOT (which I feel like makes a big difference for me at the 5K-10K distance) and I feel like I've built up a pretty strong base. So I'm feeling fairly confident that I've got a solid 6.2 miles in these legs. (As RunnersConnect reminded me recently, the 10K is still 90% aerobic, so there's that.)
The main thing I'm trying to make sure I have a handle on is the mental piece. I ran my first 10K post-stress fracture last February knowing that I wasn't going to set any records, but I still thought I could probably pull out a fairly respectable race. Instead my legs felt like lead and I proceeded to completely lose it mentally within the first mile, spent most of the rest of the race alternating between panic and grumbling to myself, & finished just fast enough to tie my personal worst.
In retrospect I think I went into that race afraid to truly run hard and suffer. It's true that I didn't have the fitness to run a great time no matter what, but I think if I'd gone into it more mentally prepared and braced for it, I wouldn't have fallen apart so easily. To quote triathlon legend Chris McCormack, "The common theme in every battle with pain I have ever won was my mind-set. It was only those times when I allowed the fear of the moment to manifest big enough in my own head—-when I didn’t think I could fully beat the problem with my self-talk and my checklist—-that the battle was lost."
So, here's the mental pep talk I'm giving myself for this weekend:
According to the forecast it will probably be around 60° during the race (8:00am) & full sun, so I am mentally preparing for an uncomfortably warm race (not because I think 60° is hot, but in my experience that's the number where my performance starts to actively go downhill & full sun makes everything 10x worse, especially on pavement).
(Update, they're now saying partly cloudy/high 50°s, WOO-HOO!!)
On the other hand, it is a pretty flat course with almost no real turns, so--**provided I can get some good sleep & rest up sufficiently between now & then**--it should be a decent indicator of where my current fitness is.
So yeah--we'll see how it goes! :)
This Sunday was kind of exciting as RunningAhead informed me that my 18 mile long run put me at 205.5 miles for the last 30 days. Not an all-time record, but it's been quite a while since I broke the 200 barrier for a 30-day period! (I think I'll be just a few miles shy of it for the month of August, just because of how the days fall. Not that I'm counting because who does that.)
Then on Friday morning, I woke up with my lower back feeling like someone had taken a baseball bat to it. I don't remember doing anything to it Thursday and it was perfectly fine when I went to bed, but when I got up I found myself completely unable to bend more than about 30°forward. Thankfully it was a good day for working from home!
My massage guy is 30 miles away in Palo Alto & usually takes at least a couple of weeks to book, so I was thankful that I managed to get a same-day sports massage with a reputable place here in the city. In addition to a bunch of stuff I already know (I live on the outside edges of my feet, have a super effed-up right hip/groin situation, a petrified left ankle, & generally insanely tight leg muscles all around), the therapist told me that it looked like I had basically sprained my right SI joint, i.e. threw my back out, probably via running (because seriously what else).
It was much improved after the massage though not perfect, and he said I could expect it to take another few days to a week to get back to normal. In the mean time, he said I could do whatever I wanted as long as I could tolerate the discomfort & it was pretty unlikely I would make it worse. Running didn't seem to bother it that much so I went ahead with my Friday pace run as planned -- 2 warm up, 50:00 @ marathon pace, 2 cool down.
This workout was not god-awful (I did complete the whole thing at a completely within-expectations pace & heart rate, pausing only for traffic lights in the Park + 1 water stop), but it was definitely MUCH harder than the 11.4 mile speed workout three days prior. (It was also on rolling concrete instead of the track, so there is also that.)
Part of me really wonders what would happen if I swapped Track Tuesdays with F-pace Fridays. Those speed days don't really feel that hard at the time, but I think they really do have a lingering effect in terms of general fatigue.
At 7:30 I was sitting on the couch in sweats & wet hair when Don texted me like "Let's go out for a nice dinner!" and I kind of snorted because the idea of getting a Friday dinner reservation in SF anywhere good when it's already dinner time is hilarious, but I dutifully fired up OpenTable & SeatMe to see what was available. In a completely random & bizarre turn of events, I snatched up an 8:30 res at Nightbird, a new restaurant that I remembered reading about recently. I didn't remember much about the food except that it was supposed to be really good & people were super excited about it opening.
Well, it turned out it was only their second night, so I have no idea how such a prime reservation for a highly anticipated opening was just sitting there an hour beforehand! The food was an absolutely brilliant five-course pre fixe (plus a couple of snacks) with wine pairing.
They also had some really interesting & tasty cocktails. So Bay Area peeps, if you're looking for a splurgy, amazing dinner in the city, check it out!
As I get further back into this actual training thing, it just becomes so, so completely clear that (to the extent that I was meant to run anything), I was meant to run 5K (or shorter) races and not really marathons. I always get so worried about going back to the track after a big chunk of nothing but super easy miles, but get me part way into that first workout and it's like, "Yes, this is my core competency, I know how to do this. I know how to go fast (for me)." I have never once come even close to running the marathon times I'm "supposed" to be able to run based on other races, but I almost never finish a speed workout, even quite long ones, feeling like I've worked all that hard. (And that's almost always having run a little faster than the assigned paces.)
Last week's 9 mile workout including 10 x 600m @ 5K pace? Not a problem. This week I was a little surprised to see what RunCoach refers to as a "Big Workout," an 11-12 mile workout consisting of a chunk of marathon pace running sandwiched between two sets of harder intervals.
In my last marathon cycle, I wasn't assigned this type of workout until about six weeks before the race, and I think I only did it maybe twice. Looking over my current training plan, though, there are about nine more of them between now and CIM. Which I suppose is just what happens when you, like, train consistently for more than a few months at a time & don't keep getting hurt or whatever. (Hopefully I haven't just jinxed myself.)
