Ever get where your mind is telling you you're hauling ass, but if you just listen to your body, you’re actually feeling comfortable? That’s kind of what the second half of Saturday’s run was like. When we were running sub-7:00s, my mind was saying this is too fast. However, my legs felt fine and my breathing was controlled. So I just tried to relax and roll with it. That’s something I’ll have to work on in races too. I’m thinking 2007 may be the year of ‘no splits’ while racing. Instead, I’ll just focus on listening to my body.
A week ago, my long run switched to Sunday, so I thought I’d roll with it this week too. The girls had a sleep-over at Grandma’s, so that made it much easier to be gone for nearly 3 hours as I ran 20 miles. If tired legs and a general lack of energy mean that you've put in some quality training the previous days, then I must be doing something right. This run gave me 85 for my "unofficial" week.
This long run was one of those long runs where you want to be alone because you don’t want to slow anyone down. I doubt I ran any of the miles under 8:00 pace. The ultimate test came at mile 16 when I swung by home to get warmer gloves. I was tempted to call it a day, but I got a drink, downed a gel and ventured back out for another 4 miles.
This morning my legs were still incredibly heavy, but I managed to slog my way through 5 miles. I doubt I was moving faster than 9:00 pace today.
Right now I’m think I may take an extra day or two recover early this week and then just focus on a Wednesday or Thursday workout, rather than trying to squeeze in two workouts and a long run. I’d rather err on the side of caution with too few workouts at this point.
For all you Minnesotans that were bummed by the lack of Runner of the Year honors this year, check out these rankings. For those of you not familiar with the process, each different distance has a qualifying time (see the “Qualifying Performance” section) by age group. People in that age group that meet the time standard are then ranked accordingly. The top 10-20 (depending on age group) performances earn points. If you’re good enough to run multiple top times then you can bump others in your age group down. For example, if I run the top 3 times (yeah, right), I’ll max out at 10 points. However, the next place in my age group would get 7 points instead of 9. Also, they only count your 5 best scores. Roll it all together and you have the RoY.
Quote of the day;
“From high school to college, you went from running 30 miles a week to running 60 or 70. Your body adapted. You improved. Throughout college, I experimented with higher and higher mileage. It followed, then, that making the next leap to the national scene would require higher mileage and even greater adaptation. Well, it worked for a while. I improved a lot…My endurance was phenomenal. But what I lacked was the ability to understand and implement elite-level training and/or I lacked the guidance of a coach who understood. I had this tremendous foundation off of which I built very little.” - Joey Keillor
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