Tough (But Good) Week

Well, this week started out with me skipping Monday's run. I woke up that morning and felt horrible. I guess the 10 mile warm up for the 5K wore me down more than I thought it would.

No worries though. Tuesday I was back out there running. Took it really easy that day and only ran 4 miles. This was Sabrina's (my training partner) first day back as well, so we made it a light running day. Wednesday I was out there and put in a 5 miler that morning. Feeling pretty good, I decided to run 10 on Thursday, as Sabrina had to work this weekend and she wasn't going to be able to run long. So on Thursday morning, I was up at 3:15am to meet at 4am. We went and ran 5 and came back to the gym to meet the others who "slept in." I got the additional 5 run and my time was pretty good. In fact, it was 6 minutes slower than my race time from April. Six minutes over 10 miles is not that much! I actually felt pretty good all day at work - even shocked my co-workers at my crazy stunt from that morning!

Now for Saturday. It started out normal. We ran a 5 mile loop, came back to the gym and planned an additional 5-6. The first 5 were really good and this is probably were I should have stopped. But no, I wanted to go on. I even thought that running 11 was not enough. Apparently, I forgot that I had just run 10 miles 2 days prior. Well, the second loop was hell, absolute hell! Uhg, it was miserable. I knew it was bad while I was out there, but it wasn't until later that day and into today (Sunday) that I realized how bad it was. I had to dig really deep to get through that run. Yes, ultimately this will make me a stronger runner, but I cannot express enough of the misery I felt from this run. Perhaps, running a 10 miler and then 2 days later running close to 11 may not be a good idea after all.

Well, lesson learned. This week will be a "normal" week. I've got a 20 mile run on Saturday and I'm not going to do anything crazy during this week that will zap my energy. In hindsight, I'm glad yesterday's run was so awful. I need those every once in a while. Hopefully this means the "bad one" is out of the way for a while and it's smooth sailing to October 18th! Hopefully!

I do want to take a moment and recognize my friend Ben Stafford who ran the Virginia Beach Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon this weekend! He told me his time was right around 2 hours. Outstanding! I'm really proud of him getting out to a race and hope he enjoyed it enough to do more in the future. I also hope at some point to meet up with him and run at least a half - perhaps full? - marathon with him! Nice job Ben!