The week of the big 2-0! I went into this week knowing that was just looming on the horizon, but knowing that this was also my last hard week of training before tapering. It definitely made it easier to get through the mileage and work outs, but it also left me feeling a bit discontent. I wasn’t worried about running the 20 mile long run, more that I knew this was my only 20 miler in such a short training cycle. This made me feel just a tad disappointed and wishing that I had just one more month of training. I feel like with one more month I could hit some even bigger goals and really feel happy with my progress. As it is I am having to just learn some acceptance and be happy that I have finally made it to Chicago at all.
The week started with a nice easy run to get over the long runs of the weekend before. Just normal boring easy runs. I switched my rest day around because even though it was a peak mileage week, I had something amazing to look forward too that helped break up the week: Death Cab For Cutie in concert!
Photographic proof I do things other than run
I have to admit that I can be sort of a shut in when I am in heavy training because I try to avoid things that A) keep me up waaaay to late at night, or B) have me standing/walking around a whole bunch. The worst shut-in ever, right? BUT! Death Cab is the greatest so I decided to not care and enjoy a beautiful night of some amazing music and pretend to be a normal person that doesn’t care if their hamstrings lock up. So it was basically worth it times a million, and might have been intensely emotional even for someone with a heart as black and bitter as mine.
Wednesday was a fun ten mile run on the hilly trails spent jumping copperhead snakes and enjoying the fact the weather has been fantastic!!!! and then I went to the track for Thursdays work out. I was sort of psyching myself out of 3×1600 repeats, mostly because I really wanted speed but I am still being careful not to push myself too super hard. Also my legs felt like trash from said hills. I haven’t even been programming set paces into my Garmin just to avoid the feeling of dread if I can’t hit them. So sticking to a plan of “just run what feels really hard but you wont break yourself” I ran all three in an average of 6:45 which is pretty much what I was hoping to stick with. This of course led to even more angst of wishing I had one more month or training…
The rest of the weeks easy runs were pretty unspectacular, I had an 8k race on Saturday (that I will recap in another post) so I did a 2-a-day that day, that leads straight into that fun little 20 mile run for Sunday. I knew that I needed to take it easy racing on Saturday when I had my long run Sunday morning and I am pretty happy that I mostly stuck to that plan. I then decided to not stick to a normal plan of taking it easy the rest of the day and did more non-runner fun activities like walk around for 3 more hours at Sparkcon downtown. Brilliant life choice.
More evidence of non-running activities!
Then it was time to wake up and spend way to much time on the flat tunnel of pain for my 20 miler. Luckily, this is the first training cycle that I actually had a running partner that was doing the same mileage, so at least it wasn’t just me and my ipod this time. So there was nothing to do but wake up, eat my usually pre-long run breakfast, drink my Scratch, and settle into pace. Magically it wasn’t that bad and I almost enjoyed it? Maybe it was because I knew I was only running one 20 miler, and not my usual 3, maybe it was because I knew this was the last long run I would have to do, but it went by pretty quickly. I mean, as quickly as a 2:40+ min run can go by anyway. Strangely enough there was yet another copperhead jumping incident (snakes seem to be the theme of my running adventures lately).
So with the end of another 60+ mile week chalk filled with a 20 miler and a decent road race, it is now finally time to taper and see what happens. I will be cutting my mileage back and probably only doing one mid-distance long run, and two short track workouts, before going completely stir crazy and insane (I don’t taper well). I hope I can keep myself plenty occupied with finishing boxing up the last of my possessions and some lame school assignments, because I am ready to get on that plane and go finish this bitch. In a way I am glad that I have had a year away from the marathon distance because it has only made me more hungry to get out there and run.
runningonsarcasm 