Week 2 will bore you to tears (sorry!)

I have been completely lacking in my comments on others' bloops.  Please don't take offense.  The past 2 weeks I have either been walking with Adam in the evening and/or had too many other things I was busy with (re: beer challenge) to concentrate on catching up on bloops.

I wouldn't even write a bloop except for the fact that I wanted to try to at least have a once a week check in while I train to BQ. If I'm successful, these bloops will give me great joy to reread.  If I fail this go 'round, I will try to understand if/when my training went wrong.

I'm no marathon expert.  I've only run 5. I like to think of them as (1)bonk, (2)gleeful, (3)poopy-pants, (4)mojo-killer, (5)awesomesauce.  So I have a little bit of knowledge under my belt about how this could all go down.  It all comes down to race day morning and how my body and mind decide to cooperate. 

Week 2 of training went pretty well. 

Tuesday: scheduled 5 easy @ 9:21 actual 9:05, 8:34, 8:13, 8:13, 8:34

Thursday: scheduled 6 speed with 3X1 @ 7:24, actual (on Wednesday) 6 total 7:19, 7:13, 6:54

Friday: scheduled 4 easy @ 9:21, actual 4 @ 8:34

Sunday: schedule 12 easy @ 9:21, actual 8:26, 8:18, 8:09, 8:14, 8:15, 8:15, 8:06, 7:51, 7:59, 7:54, 7:58, 7:43


Tuesday's run was just boring.  I ran on the TM before work so that I could walk with Adam in the evening.  Wednesday's run was great!! I actually felt like I could have gone faster.  Plus, I still had plenty of gas left in the tank when I was done.  Friday was so-so.  Another boring TM run before work.

Today's run was weird.  The first 3 miles I was about 1/10th of a mile behind a small pack of boy's cross-country runners and their coach.  They were trucking at the 8:20ish pace and I was trying desperately to not run my long run too fast.  I was still a minute off of my planned time....  I was not feeling great though.  The humidity was 100% and I knew it was not going to be a pleasant time in the woods.

Once they peeled off at around the 3.5 mile mark, I tried to maintain their comfortable pace.  But I was still feeling as though something wasn't clicking.  I hadn't settled in yet.  At the 5 mile mark, I had a Gu and within a few minutes, I started to feel instantly better.  I had some toaster waffles before I left, but apparently all this physical work I've been doing at work has really done a number to my hunger.

At mile 6 and the turn around point, I stopped my watched for a second to stretch my calves.  Then, I was off! The path had started to crowd up a bit as the morning wore on and I couldn't help but to start picking off other runners.  Besides, I started to feel better as I sped up and fell into a tempo pace.

I kept up the pace relatively happily until mile 10 when I knew I was glad I was not rounding up my 12 miler to 13.1 today.  I definitely was good to finish my 12, but there wasn't going to be much left after that.  My Garmin started getting all crazy around mile 8 because I was sweating so badly (thanks humidity) and the stupid bezel thing means that it toggles between all the screens that I don't want to be looking at.  So I basically ran the last 1/3 by feel.  I was happy that they were sub-8's, but I knew I was pushing it at the end.

This week, I have a 14-miler on the docket and the following week is a cutback week.  I don't like cutback weeks because I have a whole bunch of basically the same boring run.  I like the variety of speed, easy, long--gives me new challenges.  But I will try really hard to stick to the training schedule and hope that the training pays off.

I'm so tired right now.  It's only 8:15 and I'm contemplating going to bed.  I usually hit the hay around 11:30pm so this is highly unusual.  Too lazy to find pictures to post to my blog.  Too fuzzy-brained (work has also mentally exhausted me) to blog about anything else.