Races Like a Girl

Like last week, this week had its ups and downs. The ups were two fabulous runs on Wednesday and Thursday. I was still quite tired from Sunday’s 10 mile race heading into the week, so I was grateful for the low mileage.

Wednesday’s run (which I’m thinking of as a “recovereasy run”) is new for this training cycle (as is Thursday’s). In the previous cycle, my tempo miles were tacked onto the end of the midweek midlength run. For many of those runs, I struggled to do the tempo miles at the end. So this time around we’ve separated the two workouts.

The midlength run is now to be done at aerobic effort, but on the lower end of that scale since I need to save some energy for the next day’s tempo running. We may eventually bring back midlenth+tempo runs, but not until I adapt somewhat.

I enjoyed the run on Wednesday, in which I hopped up to White Plains and back at an average of 73% MHR in a decent time of two hours.

For Thursday, I did five warmup miles on the roads at low effort (mid-to-upper 60%s MHR), then hit the track for the four faster miles. Those went well, with the bonus that I had a full floor show for the half hour that I was there. Then finished off with more slow miles back home.

And that’s where the fabulousness ended. I never really recovered this week. The Friday runs were tiring, as I expected them to be. But I was still tired on Saturday, with my legs feeling trashed, like I’d run a race the day before. I felt fine otherwise. I skipped the planned strides because doing them was out of the question. My hamstrings and quads were complaining too much.

Sunday I woke up and my legs felt a bit better, but they were still only about 90%. The run was fine until about mile 10 when I would have been delighted to end it then and there. But I was in White Plains again and had to get home under my own steam.

This was the last Bicycle Sunday, when they close traffic to cars on the Bronx River Parkway for four hours for cyclists, runners and rollerbladers. Since the route is the same one I’ll be running in a few weeks in the Westchester Half, I thought I’d reacquaint myself with the course by running home along the parkway. I’m glad I did for two reasons: first, I was reminded of how hilly the course is, which I never notice so much in the car; second, I had opportunity to do a lot of the miles on the grassy shoulder, which helped save my legs.

Both Jonathan and I were crestfallen to find, at the end of our respective Sunday slogs, that there was no ice cream truck at the finish. Only a hot dog truck. So after a 45 minute nap we walked into Bronxville for ice cream cones. My legs felt better afterward and I’m thinking this therapeutic post-long-run ice cream stroll should become a regular thing. At least until the snow starts falling.

The next couple of weeks will feature a half marathon and lots of disruption as I attempt to train in South Africa while visiting family and friends. I have a few key workouts I’d like to do and I’m hoping that if I rise early enough (or duck out for an hour in the evening) I’ll be able to get most of the planned miles in. But I’m not going to be a lunatic about it.

Filed under: training, travel |