Thursday, March 21, 2013

I found a dragon at the end of the internet

It's really quite sad.  In my less than 72 hours of being sick, I have accomplished pretty much nothing except read and comment on every bloop and stay up-to-date on every post in Loopville.

I've been contemplating 2 main things when I've been awake.

1) How did I outperform my expectations in my race on Sunday?

2) Where/how am I going to make Trilogy and Rehoboth happen?

With #1, I am going over all the things I did right and all the things I did wrong leading up to race day.  The fact is, I trained very smartly over the first 5 weeks and then I just completed the running workouts in the second 5 weeks.  I added hills, strength training, and adhered to my don't-run-the-training-runs too fast advice.  But then something went wonky one day with an intense strength training and hills workout and I ran a 20 miler 2 days later.

Then I was busted.  My left shin was twingy and I started to feel aches in my right calf when I ran.  So I scaled back on the hills and strength training and just focused on hitting my running workouts. The thing is, I'm not sure how much better or worse I would have run if I continued the hills and ST.  On race day, I ran every single hill and had no issues.  In fact, I felt considerably better on the uphills than I did on the flats.  The downhills were what trashed my quads.

As for the ST, I will return to that now that I'm not worried about breaking myself again.  I was noticing a small transformation in my arms and abs which has to translate to something good running-wise.  On a related note, I know that a small amount of weight loss can have an effect on speed, so if I were to get serious, I would want to just eat smarter.  Like 86 the Doritos Locos Tacos and baked goods for awhile.  I have a tough time with being restrictive with my food because I've been down that path before and don't want to get all psycho-anorexic about it again.  Went to the looney bin, got the t-shirt, been healthy for 15 years.

Anyway, I tried really hard to do the runs as they were on my schedule.  I *might* have run some of the LSD a little too fast, but no where near the crazy stuff I was trying to pull with my last training cycle.  In the end, I felt appropriately rested and relaxed on race day.  Duuuuuuuuuuuuhhhh, stick the to the training schedule?? Who woulda thought....

The other big factor was the 3:45 pace group.  Even though the splits were a little off kilter, I realized that it helps that I'm a follower.  Just put some runners around me and tell me to keep up.  They did all the thinking about the time and splits, I just poured water down my throat and looked for random strangers to high five.

I guess I just never thought 3:43 was in me.  Which of course led me to obsess about getting down to 3:35--the BQ time for my age.  I'm thinking, if there wasn't 3000 feet of elevation change (1534 worth of climb) and I shaved off a few tacos and cookies, could I hit it?? I know I can put in the training, it just comes down to having a great race day.  I'm not going to obsess over it--I don't like the idea of putting it all out there only to fail, but I also think that since it is in the realm of possibility, I would be silly to not say that I wasn't thinking about it.

Okkkkkkkkkkkkkay, now onto #2.



Oh yeah, #2 was supposed to be that I found new smileys to insert into my posts with html.  Yup, I reached the end of the internet....

Onwards to the (new) #3:

I told Adam this morning that I had been researching 2 races for the fall that were Loopfests.  He didn't seemed fazed by this which I will take as a good sign.  However, I have been talking about them for years now and never actually had the opportunity to make it happen.  So I could just be the boy who cried wolf.  But I think I can make at least one of the two.  So now I just have to figure out the logistics if I am going to make it happen.  The funny thing is that the running part is the least of my concern. The money part isn't even a big deal. It's that silly time off work thing which now has been dramatically reduced because of this stupid flu.  Rawr!

Enough ramblings while drugged up on a cocktail of antibiotics and OTC pills.


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