this was my third-to-last week of training. last weekend i swapped the order of my long run with my speed work for this week's tuesday (somehow that reads as confusingly as possible, so see if you can do something with it then move on)
... and anyway the upshot was i ran long on monday (see previous post) and this meant that i had a 7 mile tempo run to do on thursday, and a 13 miler today. what i in fact ran was 5.5 miles on thursday, and 11.5 miles today.
a B, B- effort, it would seem? but keep reading.
according to my current pace calculation (which i am calculating with reference to my half-marathon 'race' time from a few weeks ago, but shaving two minutes off to account for how i ran it back to back with 7 miles the night before as part of training, so no taper, so let's say that's conservative...) ok, sorry that sentence's centre cannot hold.
according to my current pace calculation, i was supposed to do the tempo 7 miles at 9:15/miles and the 13 today at 9:45/miles. and my overall paces both days were spot on, but actually that's a bit misleading, for one good and one bad reason.
the good one was that both days i had a quite slow first mile, and i need that, that's cool, so the tempo mile splits are like 9:45/9:15/9:02/8:56/8:58... and then the last half mile cool-down, maybe 9:50. but the bad reason from today's run was that after the first really creaky mile, something like 10:20, i never really got into a rhythm, so my pace fluctuated a lot. most of the miles were somewhere around 9:30, and a couple were far too fast, and two were around 9:55-10:00. usually i'm pretty consistent with my pace, and today i was rather more surge-and-fade than usual. there was no consistent downward trend, and if anything i bet i negative split, but it was still weird for me.
so, still maybe now a B+ effort? but keep reading.
early october weather is supposed to be fall, right? leaves are falling off trees here. it's getting into the 40s fahrenheit at night. but no, thursday it was in the 80s with sun and high humidity when i ran mid in the morning, and today it was in the mid 70s but so humid i got back to the car looking like a swimmer. i *rang out* my ponytail from sweat. so this was nonsense, and SURELY detroit is not going to be 80F with 70% humidity at 7am in two weeks time. OKAY RIGHT???
next, there's wednesday crosstraining. i went to this plyometrics class wednesday night? it's pretty great. i didn't push myself really hard; i just got a good work out. yes, but, 14 miles on monday. and i've been training for weeks. and then miles on thursday morning. and so yesterday my legs were sore, sore, sore. not i can't walk sore, but definitely i think twice about sitting quickly sore. and there was stretching and rolling, but obviously this accounted for the creaky first mile today.
and finally, there is serious general fatigue. where did that come from? oh, let me tell you what else happens when there's heat and humidity in this part of the world. night-timethunderstorms. you know who really can't handle thunderstorms? our dog. you know what she does when something happens that she can't handle? she curls up desperately on your face and pants. long story short: i got far less sleep than i wanted or needed both thursday and friday (last) night. and to mitigate this, once the thunderstorms were over, i slept in somewhat, and so there i was at noon out in the humid soup on creaky legs, with 13 miles to run.
thus: i am giving myself A+ GOLD STAR for this week's training.
(thursday morning's 5.5 instead of 7 was partly heat, partly plyo, but also partly the failure to realize that i cannot run comfortably less than 2 hours after eating oatmeal. maybe it used to be different, but lotta things used to be different, sister. so there was an angry, angry stomach for a lot of that time. learned the lesson, for real this time.)
the most important thing about these two runs is that i don't think shortening each one by 1.5 miles reflects a lack of mental fortitude. i definitely wanted to quit at about mile 2 on thursday, and honestly at mile 3 today. if i had just been out running for the fun of it i would have thought eff this! fun is not to be had today! and done something else. but in both cases i reminded myself i'm almost done this training business, and i want a repository of memories wherein it *sucked* and i did it *anyway*. and i'm putting all of thursday and all of today's miles in that memory bank, and they will be there when i need them.
i did a fair amount of evaluating vital signs: i knew that if anything in my legs hurt in the twinge way not the ache-creak-overalltired way, or if i was dehydrating or overheating in a real way, that it would be time to back off, but that didn't happen. at mile 3 today i thought: this is hard, but it's really my head that's finding it hard. and at mile 10, it felt physically no harder. i didn't let myself turn on music until mile 6, which is hardly far into a marathon but felt like SO LONG today, and the beat helped but mostly i just talked to myself about how it's all mental, it's all mental, and i'm getting close now, and i've got it in me, and jesus christ how is it only .02 miles since the last time i looked at my watch? that is not even possible! that's like looking at your phone to check the time and not seeing it and realizing you didn't and then having to check again right away! dammit, i'm listening to Eminem again. ... so, yeah, the self-talk needs a little work. i have some mantras, too, but they are so embarrassing i'm not telling you them. they work, a little, so that's good enough.
two weeks left now. i think that means five more runs before marathon day. aspects of the plan include: being smart. stretching. pilates. easy, careful runs. (supposed to be 10 miles next weekend? we'll see. i won't mind if it's more like 8 or 9.) foam rolling. crosstraining on the elliptical and at home. getting sleep. lots of planks and back strength and other core stuff. a little yoga. not tripping over anything, seriously now. actually that's become hard recently, because after a bunch of running (and i did run 31 miles in the last 6 days, that's kind of a bunch) i apparently lose lateral-type balance? i'm not sure if it's the small ankle muscles or some bigger quad/ham/glute ones that are the culprit, but now is not the time for me to take up tightrope walking. if i start doing multiple things at once, like walking down the sidewalk and texting, i may get ticketed for appearing drunk and disorderly. it's a little ridiculous. anyway, no falling sideways awkwardly into something and spraining my whatever.
oh, and an amusement to end with? today before i had really resigned myself to a hard mental slog, i was running along this kind of pretty rural road at the bottom of campus, and there's big trees in the distance and farmland around me and this series of agricultural research facilities i mentioned before (the poultry research people? then the pork research people?)... and then i'm coming up this winding little bit of road, the sky is blue, the clouds are wispy, and then at the next big intersection with a sort of highway that leads back into campus i see... a gleaming building! it's green and sleek and mysteriously out of place, and it's surrounded by pristine parking lot and it's got this background of autumn trees and what the hell is it... oh, of course. it's the OTHER branch of the glimmering campus Credit Union! remember last time i ran through cornfields to the Credit Union, way on the other side of town? yeah, clearly same architects. the magic is everywhere. so bizarre.
back to life, folks. i have a couple more things to blog about here in the next little while, so i'll be around.
... i got this! probably!
but dinner first.
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