At the beginning of last week I had ambitions of running somewhere between 60 and 70 miles, with a 20-21 mile run on Saturday at home in New Jersey. I had heard the weather for Thursday and Friday was supposed to be decent, and I expected some decent riding.
Well, none of that happened, and more frustrating is how wrecked my body feels.
Following the 10 miler last weekend I was feeling great. Monday's run was easy, and then I hopped into the BrenJunGram workout on Tuesday, which was the week's highlight. Wednesday and Thursday I was too beat up to run, so I just hit the pool. Too miserable still to ride outside.
Friday came and my plan was to run about 12 miles when I got back to New Jersey. I stopped on the way home at Manasquan Reservoir, a 5ish mile cinder loop around a big body of water. I haven't run here in a few years and my return was not kind to me. Granted I had just been in a car for 2.5 hours, but there was no way I had run a 7:17 first mile. I picked it up marginally and was running 7:00, and then just a little under. It felt way too hard.
On the second lap I was still working way harder to run 6:46s than I should have. I didn't get it. To make sure I wasn't crazy, when I got back to the start again (now after 10 miles) I went after it for a mile. The effort was harder than Tuesday's run, and it only yielded a 6:16. Not possible. At worst it should have been 5:50. I mean, I was absolutely tearing along the trail.
So the end result is that I don't believe their mile markers, but whatever. If I ran that slow then I just suck.
Saturday's plan to run long was stymied by a) how incredibly, brutally cold and windy it was and b) how bad I felt. Instead, I just ran an unbelievably slow 7.5 miles at Hartshorne, my favorite park and site of my August 1, 2003 ankle breakage. After the run my dad and I headed up to the Prudential Center to watch Seton Hall take on incumbent #1 Pitt. Unfortunately for The Hall, Pitt showed that it's a contender for a National Championship.
On to Sunday. I realized upon my arrival in NJ that the E Murray Todd Half Marathon was on Sunday. This was the first half marathon I ever participated in. It was also the first time I had to stop during a race to take a dump. But it would not be the last. I thought hmm, maybe I'll jump in and try and use it as a solid long run, starting around 6:20 and working down to the low 6:00 range. That is, only if it wasn't snowing.
And guess what - it was snowing. I didn't want to run in that, since I had forgotten to bring pants or tights. So I didn't run. Instead I spent a few hours at home with the family, and then drove back to Baltimore to watch 10 minutes worth of track spread over 2 hours. I still hadn't run. Finally went running at 11:30pm in the snow. It was obnoxious but I didn't care. All I care about is how ER will finally come to an end...
Week Totals:
swim - 8000m
bike - 0
run - 44 miles (lowest in 2 months)
4 comments:
ahh thinking about ER ending drives me into a deep depression.
I haven't really been watching, but I'll watch when Clooney's on
Dude, sounds like you are running too hard on your runs. No point hammering runs if it prevents you from getting in a solid seven days of running. Shoot for a week of 70 easy miles, then throw in some faster runs after that.
Jake, I can't even begin to describe how easy I have been running. Last week was a mild exception with the race on Sunday and then the workout on Tuesday. I rarely run faster than 7min pace for any run, and most of my runs on my own are 7:30 pace.
I think this past week I was just tired, and I got lazy because I went home. I won't run 7 days in any week, but if I can get in 6 days of pretty easy running I'll be cool.
This was the first week where I've felt tired, so I think I'll get back by the endo f this week.
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