It's going to be October in a few days, and the official start of Fall was earlier this week. Is it too much to ask to be done with these warm, humid mornings already?!? After our great 22-miler two weeks ago, I got served up some humble pie during this morning's run.
Angela and I headed out a little after 5am as usual. A lot of our training group is in taper mode for their race next weekend, so there were only a few familiar faces starting at that hour. It was super humid when we started, and I didn't take it as a good sign that I was already drenching myself with water at the first water stop 2 miles in. It didn't get better from there either. Same old drill - soaked socks/shoes after about an hour, drinking a lot of fluids which led to a full belly. I was not in a good place mentally for much of the run because I was frustrated that it was taking so much effort to run. I told Angela about halfway through that I was in a negative head space, and she tried to pull me out of it. But, it didn't really work because the damage had already been done at that point. I let her go at about mile 15 while I stopped for a bathroom break hoping that would help. I hit a water stop a few minutes later and essentially just consumed the fluids that I had just gotten rid of, so it didn't really help that much in the end. I had a sharp pain on my right side deep in the stomach muscle that I had to baby for the next mile or so. But, then I was able to work through it and finish up the last couple of miles fairly strong.
I asked K this afternoon to check the weather in DC to give me piece of mind that the weather should indeed be cooler for race day than what I have been plodding through these past few months. With another month to go, he assured me that it should be. So, I will remain hopeful...especially with the weather forecast for next weekend looking to bring temps back down here into the 60's (or maybe even 50's?) so that I can get in one more confidence-building long run before taper.
Sunday, September 28: 3 miles (treadmill)
Easy 3 mile recovery run.
Race week is 4 weeks from today!
Monday, September 29: 8 miles (treadmill)
This should be the last medium long run that is over an hour, as recovery week is next week followed by taper! Moving forward after MCM I would like to get these medium long runs more consistently in the 10-mile range, but I struggle with getting this done from a time perspective on a work day.
Tuesday, September 30: OFF
Wednesday, October 1: 5.5 miles (road)
It's October today - where are the Fall temperatures?! It was so warm and humid again tonight. I told K that it felt like I was running with a wet diaper on toward the end of the workout because my shorts were absolutely soaked through from sweat. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
We did this workout in Week 19, so we knew the drill. The focus is on maintaining MGP (which, honestly, I haven't really settled on for race day because it seems to vary so much in the weather conditions that we've been running in here).
We did two sets of the following:
"800m at MGP
400m EASY
800m at MGP
400m HARD
800m at MGP"
I used my time estimate from a few weeks ago for the 800's of 4:53-5:07. I noticed that I had a really hard time backing down to MGP for the final 800 following the fast 400 toward the end of my first set. So, I made a focused effort on that for the second set, and I did better. I didn't really time each segment of this workout, but I averaged around 9:30/mile pace for the first set and 9:50/mile pace for the second set.
Today was a perfect example of not really wanting to run initially, but being happy I did and feeling better afterwards. My stress level from work has been pretty high lately, and I also seem to be teetering on the line of getting sick with my usual allergy/sinus infection crap. I know that Angela counts on me to be at the workouts, so I showed up and did the work. And, what do you know, I relieved some of my stress in the process (even if only for a little while).
The majority of our training group did an abbreviated workout tonight before heading off to their respective marathons this weekend. It was bittersweet to watch them finish up and head back while Angela and I trudged on for another set. But, we're almost to our own start/finish lines. Our time will be here soon enough.
Very similar to yesterday, I felt worn down physically and stressed from work, so I wasn't very motivated to get my run done. Notice that I broke it down into a .5 mile though just to get it done and even out from last night's mileage.
Friday, October 3: OFF
Week 22 Total: 42 miles
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