Sunday, April 20, 2014

Disappointing Easter Run

Sometimes it pays to listen to the way you feel, not just while running, but beforehand as well.  I watched the Flyers game and felt tired and had no desire to run after it was over.  However, I grabbed my stuff to get out there and give it a go anyway.  That decision didn't work out.

The plan was to try to run 15 miles at goal pace.  Since it wasn't too hard to do 18 at that pace in similar conditions two weeks ago, I thought it would be no problem.  After all, I did that that day after an 80 mile week.  Now, I had a 40 cutback week that I'm coming off of.

The weather was nearly perfect.  It was in the upper 50s.  I'll take that all year long.  I wore the shorts and a short sleeve shirt of course.  I headed to Riverview on this sunny day.

I took off and headed toward the Route 33 Boat Launch.  The legs didn't feel all that great.  Two weeks ago, I was able to run 6:40 miles without much of a struggle in the beginning.  Today, it was totally different.  I had to work more than I wanted to and the pace wasn't quite as fast.

My foot was a little sore in the beginning too.  At least it wasn't the problem area that had been bothering me.  That might've finally gone away.  I came through the first mile at 6:47.  That would not have been bad if I was working a little less or feeling better.

Since I was moving quickly, this start flew by.  Before long, I was to the Boat Launch.  I ran through the parking lot and decided to continue on.  I came to mile 2 in that area with a 6:46.  I continued to not feel very good.

I decided that I'd run on the softer dirt trail section along the river.  I figured maybe that would help.  I did that and felt a little better, but I still wasn't great.  When I got to the section where I could take the Boat Launch road, I did just that. 

That meant a short climb.  Then, I was on to the bumpy road.  That was awful and frustrating, but the worst part was that I was fighting a slight headwind.  Not a good thing when the body doesn't feel great.  I came through mile 3 at 6:48.

The terrible feeling just wouldn't go away.  I slowed a little in this next mile, but still felt terrible.  By now, I figured that it wasn't worth fighting my body.  Sure, I could've worked hard and battled through this, but what for.  When I'm struggling this early, it is better to just shut it down and rest.  Even though I was over a mile out, I quit at mile 4.  That mile was a 6:59.

I'm not as bad as today's run indicated and probably not as strong as the run two weeks ago showed.  I'm likely somewhere in the middle right now.  I was super confident after that run, but this one brought me back down to earth.  I thought one week of recovery from back to back 80 mile weeks might be enough, but I think I was still paying for it today.  I definitely need some more rest.

This weekend has been sort of frustrating.  I have a ton of friends running Boston tomorrow and I'm happy for them.  I'm also disappointed that I haven't made it there yet.  I know I have the ability to run the time needed to get there, I just have to learn how to run it.  Running a fast marathon is so much different than any other race.  I feel like I could BQ about 80% of the time right now and run a sub 3 hour marathon about 40-50% of the time right now.

I'm stressing out too much about that goal.  I was even thinking about maybe trying to jump into a marathon the week before my 50 miler, even though I know that would be a bad idea.  I know I'm still getting faster and faster, but I don't know how much longer I can train at this high of a level without backing off and taking a break.

I feel like I'll improve enough to run a sub 3 hour marathon by the summer.  However, the heat will obviously be a huge ex factor, even at night.  If I sign up for that race, I need to go into it with no expectations.  That's easier said than done.  For now, I should really start to think about my upcoming half marathon in less than two months.  I need to work on improving at that distance and at a race I know how to handle.  Maybe I should just concentrate more on that race, sign up for the marathon, but just let the marathon happen.

Tomorrow is certainly an off day.  I'll run again on Tuesday.  I have no idea what I want to do.  I think I need a faster workout and a half marathon quality workout this week.  I'm definitely not jumping up to 80 miles again this week.  I'm thinking I need to get back into the 60s though.  These mere 4 miles are a slow start though.

4 miles - 27:20 (6:50 pace)

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