Today's long run for recovery week is scheduled to be 10-12 miles. In order to get some practice in a race simulation mode, I found a half-marathon that I am going to run tomorrow instead. So, I switched tomorrow's off day for the final day of recovery week with today.
Sunday, September 21: 13.1 miles (road)
The Texas Road Romp Half Marathon in Waco, Texas
It was hot, hilly, and I suffered. The End.
So, an ad for this race popped up in my FB news feed last month, and I thought it would be a good race prep run for me. I never intended on "racing" it, but wanted to get out of it the practice of doing a long run on a race course with mile markers, aid stations, etc. The course was described as "mostly flat with a few small hills." Since the race was at the end of September, I was also hoping for cooler weather. Well, neither of those things actually turned out to be true.
We drove up to Waco on Saturday afternoon and had some extra time after picking up our packets nearby, so K convinced me to drive the race course. The map of the course had looked pretty confusing, and he was concerned about inadvertently going off course (ya know because he wouldn't have throngs of people ahead of him to follow like us middle of the packers). We were both glad that we previewed the course though because the course was definitely hillier than either of us were expecting. Expecting a flattish course and then running into some of those hills during the race would have destroyed me mentally, so I was able to adjust my expectations and reaffirm that my plan was to run easy, especially since this is my long run for recovery week.
The race didn't start until 8am, which was already a red flag for me. Remember, I start my long runs at 5am and usually finish between 8-9am. The temps at the start were in the mid 70's and probably close to 80 when I finished. The first few miles of the course went through Cameron Park, which had quite a bit of tree cover (but the trade-off was that this part of the course had more hills). Then, we entered a brief neighborhood section (with more hills) as a transition to McLennan Community College (hills here, too). Unfortunately, as we exited the campus at around mile 8, we hit a flat stretch along the side of a busy road which was very exposed to the sun for the next few miles. Since we drove the course in advance, I knew that this stretch was going to be tough because it was going to be warm and boring. And, sure enough, this is the stretch that broke me.
I started out running 9-ish minute miles for the first couple of miles, which was faster than I would normally run for an easy long run so I am going to have to be careful about going out too fast at MCM. But, I knew the first couple of miles were flat and the hills were coming. I ran a few of the first hills, but then just walked the uphill and cruised the downhill so I think the pace probably evened out. I walked the water stops and took water (then Gatorade at the later stops) at each stop and also dumped the remainder of the water over myself to try to cool down.
I finished 10k in about an hour then 9 miles in about 1:30. But, at that point, I was cooked from the heat and had the boring, exposed stretch of road ahead of me. Mentally, I just shut down and was done. I was also having tummy issues because of the excess fluid that I had consumed because of the heat, which didn't really help matters since I had needed to go to the bathroom pretty much since mile 1. I was also frustrated because I thought the course was long, and I heard from others that their GPS was also off by about .3-.5 mile. I walked a lot in the last 4 miles and just wanted to be done. I was so miserable because of the warm weather. The race finished on the Waco Suspension Bridge, which was very uneven in terms of surface so it was difficult to run the last .1 to just finish the thing in 2:15. My first words to K when I saw him at the finish were "That was awful!" But, he won the race by 11 minutes, so apparently it was only awful for me.
Monday, September 22: 8 miles (treadmill)
I considered switching my medium long run until tomorrow because of the race yesterday, but I had more time today so I went ahead and got it done. I felt somewhat sore during the day, but I was actually surprised by how good I felt while I was running.
Tuesday, September 23: OFF
Wednesday, September 24: 9 miles (road)
Angela sent me a text last night after getting the email details from Bobby about tonight's workout questioning whether the workout was really going to be this long. Oh, yes, ma'am. I remembered it from Week 16 when we finished super late in the evening. With that in mind, I convinced her to start the workout on our own shortly after 6pm since we were already at Rogue before Bobby assembled the group at 6:30pm and set off closer to 6:45pm. Turns out we made a great decision to do so because Bobby actually wasn't there tonight.
We had a 2.25 mile warmup over to the Pemberton neighborhood then we did several 1.5 mile loops focused on maintaining a "hardER" pace but not "hard." I knew what to expect since we had done this workout before (Angela had missed it though), and I remembered struggling with the effort in the heat. So, I was thankful for the cooler temperature in the low 80's and for Angela to pace with.
We had to run 2 loops at a steady pace without stopping. We went through the first loop in a little over 14 minutes, which was a minute slower than when I previously did the workout (then bombed out in the 2nd loop). But, this time we picked up the pace in our second loop, and our total for the 3 miles was 27:19 (9:05 overall pace), which turned out to be 40 seconds faster than in the prior workout (despite starting slower tonight). Hmm, maybe there's a lesson in there, mel!
After several minutes of stopping to recover, we went out again for another loop and clocked it at 12:57 (8:38 overall pace) for the 1.5 miles. Start slow, finish strong.
Then, it was back the 2.25 miles to Rogue as it was getting dark. So, so glad that we started when we did!
Thursday, September 25: 6 miles (treadmill)
Easy run on the treadmill to finish off the week.
Friday, September 26: OFF
Week 21 Total: 36 miles
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