BALDY and the slowest 15 miles of my life.

I had a real good week this week. I did not get in any doubles as planned, but did hit the 80 mile mark. My sunday run ended up being a beastly trail run up to the top of mount baldy.

It was an awesome experience, filled with gasping/rasping/power hiking etc. I have never really ran anywhere where hiking is mandatory and more efficient than running, so this was quite a surprise. Everything about running to the peak of Baldy was just awesome. I have never ran a 15 mile run so slow, but because of altitude, climbing and general exhaustion it was one of the toughest runs of my life.

The stats fats:

M-11 @ 7:00
T- 11.5 w XC type workout - 8 X .4 miles on grass with .1 jogging recovery. pace between 5:05 and 4:55. Finished on track with 200 m strides with 100 recovery for 1.5 miles. Felt great.
W-11 easy
T- 10.5 w/ 3 @ 6:10 and 3 @ 6:30 on sand (tempo fail, was just too beat)
F- 11.5 w/ 6 hard (no watch, felt much better) + strides
S-10.5 EZ
S- 15 from 6k to 10k elevation out and back. Very slow up mountain and faster down.

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(re)Building the Base

Very happy to report my first seriously good training week since before San Diego. After 75 miles and a bad race on monday, I am feeling optimistic about the direction my training is headed. I have been feeling anxious about coming back too soon since my last marathon, and in short, I did. I placed unrealistic expectations for myself for monday's race, and was let down when I didn't get to where I wanted to be. But the pressure is off! I have felt less stressed about pace since monday's race, and have been able to concentrate more on beefing up volume and working on my general aerobic conditioning. I know that the sharpness will not come overnight - a point drilled into me by Mr. Dave Fier. It is hard to grapple with the fact that I will not be sharp and fit 365 days a year, but after talking with him on tuesday I realized that I dont have to beat myself up about it.

Thank goodness.

Hopefully with 2 doubles this week I will get mileage into the 80's where I will try to keep it for most of the next 3 months. If I can do that, I may be able to PR in Long Beach.

sh*tty race . . .

Well I could have predicted it as soon as I finished running 15 on saturday, and probably even earlier in the week. I was neither destined nor prepared to run a fast time at today's surf city run 5k. I was sore on saturday, felt worse on sunday and did not feel much improvement this morning as I warmed up. The temperatures were in the mid - high seventies, I ate a crappy dinner last night and etc. etc. etc. excuses excuses excuses. The bottom line is that I went out today and failed to meet any of the goals I had for the race, aside from finishing.

I wanted to go out in 5:18 and negative split, and what ended up happening was comically far from that. I think I ran the first mile in something like 5:32 and at that point felt so miserable that I pretty much gave up the fight. I looked down at my watch during the third mile and read something about a 6:05 mile while I felt like I was running all out. The end result was a 5k time that was slower than my goal 10k pace. Oh well. I know I have to get over it, but it just sucked because it was the first time I have run wearing my A Snails Pace uniform, and because I feel like I am in really good shape.

Regardless though, training proper was good last week.

I got in 64 something miles and had a nice 15-16 on saturday. I did run most of my runs this week at a quicker rate than I should have, and that might have contributed in part to me feeling pretty crappy at the start line today.

The moral of the story for the week is that there is no cheating when it comes to performing your best. If running well at a certain race is a priority, than it needs to be treated as such. I chose to think that because it was only 5k, it did not particularly matter what I did leading into the race, because, after all, I am a marathon runner, and 5k should be no problem - even running all out. That is not how it works. The 5k is a brutal race, and it is something I have only begin to wrestle with. I now know that I have got to take a serious look at scheduling my long run more than 48 hours away from a short race. I will work with coach Fier and try to develop some strategies so that come the Pride of the Valley 5k this august I will get to the line in good form, health and fitness.