Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Catching up

I will add more historical information as I go along.  Exactly 49 days away from Boston, I needed a medium-length run yesterday.  Not that I’m starting to panic or anything, but I haven’t been able (or willing) to be as diligent with my training as I had planned.  So, basically, I am starting to panic a little bit (obviously, the sentence above was a lie).  After my miserable run 1 week ago, when I staggered into the Chambers Bay Pro Shop and (as E.T did) “phoned home,” I started getting a bit nervous about my fitness.  So, yesterday, according to Pfitzinger’s book, it was supposed to be a 12 mile run.  According to EN’s Marathon Hack, it was 2 x (8′ at MP, 2′ at LRP, 8′ at TP, 4′ at LRP) for a total of 80 minutes.*

(MP-marathon pace; LRP-long run pace; TP-threshold pace)

It was a dark and stormy night… running after work (after I had checked in on Ryan), it was getting dark when I set out into a steady rain.  I decided to head off to Fort Steilacoom Park, where I would stay on pavement instead of the trails.  In my mind, I figured that two loops around the lake and then home, would get me close to 11 miles, and I could be relatively sure of my footing, even at dusk.  The good news:  I was able to complete my planned course and it came out to 10.5 miles.  The bad news:  my splits were slower than I had wanted, and the slog up Union was a bear, because I was hungry and tired.  During the entire run, my legs felt tight, and I didn’t feel like I could stride out.  But, for the first time in a few weeks, I felt like I deserved a beer, and treated myself to a Mirror Pond Pale Ale.  Life was much better after I ate dinner with the family and drank my beer.  Although I was slower than I had wanted, at least I accomplished what I had intended to do.

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