Races Like a Girl

This, week two of my eight week basebuilding experiment, proved a tough one. I ratcheted up the mileage another 10%. In two weeks, I’ve gone from 50 miles to 88 miles. This is bearing in mind that I averaged 76 mpw during training for the spring race. Still, I felt those extra miles by the weekend, and had to make some compromises as a result.

I kept most of the miles as recovery miles — nearly 60% of them. But that wasn’t enough. Read on.

Today starts a much-needed recovery week. No running today and lots of slow running. Then a race on Saturday — so much for recovery…

A look back at the week:

• Monday: 6.1 miles recovery pace (AM); 5.1 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Tuesday: 5.1 miles recovery pace (AM); 5 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Wednesday: 9.9 miles tempo with 2×2 at 15K-half marathon pace (AM); 4.2 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Thursday: 6 miles recovery pace (AM); 6.1 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Friday: 7 miles easy pace (AM); 4 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Saturday: 6 miles recovery pace (AM); 4 miles recovery pace (PM)
• Sunday: 19.8 mile long run (steady pace)

Total mileage: 88.3 miles

Paces this week:

• Recovery: 9:50 – 11:20
• Tempo: 6:59 – 7:13
• Easy: 7:55
• Long: 8:57

Things were going well until Saturday. I had a really good tempo run earlier in the week, then felt so good on Friday morning that I raced through seven miles at under 8:00 minutes per mile. And that turned out to be a big mistake.

I was tired on Saturday during both my runs. Then I didn’t get to bed until well after midnight since the Reebok meet ran late. Got seven hours of sleep Saturday night, woke up exhausted. And it was hot and humid.

I had one of the worst runs I’ve had in awhile on Sunday. I couldn’t drag myself out until after 9AM on Sunday (I usually start much earlier). I knew by mile five that it was going to be a tough run. I was tired, my legs hurt and it was 85 degrees and humid, with me sweating up a storm at high noon.

I must have been on crack when I thought I could run 20 with the last five at marathon pace at the end of this particular week. I gave up on that idea early on and engaged in a process of lowering my expectations with every mile. Finally settling on trying to keep the average pace under a 9:00 mile (just made it).

Anyway, I beat myself up over it and then realized that this is basebuilding, after all. I got my mileage in and there’s plenty of time for fast long runs later on. Things should get easier as I get more acclimatized to the heat and humidity too.

I registered for the NYRR Mini 10K on Saturday. It’s probably going to be hot and humid, but I’m still excited to run it. The olympic marathon team will be running it, as well as some big name international elites. They will, of course, be too far ahead of me to see, but I’ll know they’re there nevertheless.

This will also be the first NYRR race I’ll run since they instituted their seeded corrals policy. I wondered how they would figure my pace. It turns out they take the fastest per mile pace you’ve run in a NYRR race. It works to your advantage if you run shorter NYRR races, but it’s not so great if all you run are the longer ones. It seems like it would be easy enough to seed runners based on their best paces relative to other distance/pace equivalents. But them’s the rules and I shall not argue with the NYRR gods.

I don’t have a hard time goal, since the weather will be a factor. I just want to run as fast as I can. Wish me luck!

Coming up in Fall Training Week 3 (which started today): A day off, lots of slowpoke miles, a race and a long run on Sunday. All adding up to a mere 61 miles.

Filed under: basebuilding, inspiration, racing, training |