STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

What about “lack of strength in lack of numbers”? After missing a key workout on Tuesday and cutting my mileage a little on a couple of other days, my main goal was to get in my 21 mile run today. Since the triathletes only had a 90 minute run planned, Mary and I agreed to meet before practice in order to get some miles in. Mary’s shooting for around 3:30 at Grandma’s, so I don’t mind running her pace – it’s a nice warm-up. We ended up running 65 minutes together and commented on the strong winds a few times.

For some reason we only had about 10 people show up today. Within the first ½ mile we split into 4 groups. Jenna, Brian and our coach were up front, I was by myself followed by a pack of 3 that included Mary. Normally I don’t have a problem running by myself, but today it was windy – brutally windy, like white-caps on the Mississippi River-windy. Of course the first 3 miles or so were directly along the river, into the wind. About the time I turned away from the river my coach was looping back to tell everyone where to go since this was a new route. 2 minutes later I had no idea where I was going so I looped back and ended up running Sue, who’s training for her first Ironman. We were going a tad slower than I wanted, but I wasn’t feeling that great, so I didn’t mind too much.

After finishing the run with Sue I looped back to get Mary since we both had 20 more minutes to run. I really hate running by the finish location of a run when you still have more running to do. I told Mary we need to either meet earlier or add-on before we run by our cars. Anyway, I managed to get in 2 hours and 49 minutes of running. At first I wrote 21 miles in my log book. But after thinking about it a little more, I wrote 20. I figure I was closer to 8:25 pace than 8:00. In the end, 2:49 is 2:49. Whether I write 20 or 21 in my log book won’t affect my fitness.

For the week I was supposed to run between 80-85 miles. With my cold I was able to manage 68. That's a little depressing. However, looking back at my previous marathon training - 68 miles would have been a high week for me. So I can't be too upset.