WEEKEND RECAP

I ran an easy 6 miles on the treadmill Friday night. Saturday I was hoping to get to practice about 30 minutes before everyone else, since they were “only” going 2 hours and I wanted to get in 20 miles. By the time I got up and helped get the girls going, I only arrived a few minutes before practice. I could always add on afterwards, right?

Evan met my training group Saturday morning and joined us on the run. The number of “fast” runners in our group is fairly low, so it was nice have Evan along. We ran out-and-back on Sheppard Road, which is the route that this Saturday’s half marathon follows.

Basically, Evan and I ran with Jenna and Joyce for the majority of the run. With about 3 miles to go we went up a hill and I started falling behind. I used the downhill to catch back up. The last 2 miles I was just trying to hang on. I was getting a little discouraged until I told myself that I’m running with people that ran 2:47, 2:49 and 2:57 last year. That helped shed some of my negative thoughts. Any thought of adding on at the end we dashed by this faster pace (we probably averaged sub-7:30). However, I figure 16 strong miles is better than 20 easy to moderate miles sometimes.

This gave me 97 miles for the week. Daws has an example where he added up his weekly miles and they were “only” 99, so he threw his shoes on and went out for a mile run. He agreed that physically there’s probably no difference between 99 and 100. However, mentally the difference was huge to him. I did have thoughts of running 3-4 more miles in the evening, but after dinner with some friends and putting the girls to bed, I just wanted to relax.

This week I plan on cutting back a little. I think that will let my last 2 weeks “soak in” while providing a mini-taper for my first race in 3.5 months. I started the week with two 10-mile runs, yesterday and today. They were boring an uneventful. Maybe even unblogworthy.