This is the last week of big runs. Mother Nature did her part of making it a clusterfuck, and work did it’s part to aggravate me. The week’s plan was…
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 mi + 7 strides | 8 miles | 5 mi + 7 strides | 5 miles - M Pace | 20 miles |
Monday was 5 miles up the hill and 7 strides in the park. I accidentally bumped my watch when trying to check remaining miles, so that first ‘lap’ ended around a quarter mile early, but I made it up after my strides and then ended up continuing a little long because of where I ended up. It was a cold one today, 34F based on Garmin Connect’s recollection. 6.53 miles in 56:42 (8:41 pace).
Tuesday was a nice 8 mile jaunt across downtown and the 8th Street Viaduct to the west-side. I felt slow-ish, but my watch tells me otherwise. Still cold. 8 miles in 1:09:09 (8:38 pace).
Wednesday was really cold in the morning, so I ran at lunch. I kept it reasonably easy around the bridges and both sides of the river. I was really trying to keep it easy, but I guess I was enjoying the nice weather (53F!). 6 miles in 49:52 (8:18 pace).
Thursday was a 5 mile M pace run. Which, since everything seems like it’s M pace, this becomes a tempo run. I kept it on the Cincy side of the river and where it is mostly flat. It was warmer in the morning than Wednesday’s lunchtime run. 6.5 miles in 53:14 (8:11 overall pace, M pace portion was 8:00 pace).
Friday was … interesting. First off, I was still feeling a little full from the prior evening – I had a normal spaghetti dinner before a homebrew club meeting, and then I ate some more food at the homebrew club meeting (it was beer food night, so there was some beer cheese, a wonderful dubbel beef stew, and a delectable imperial stout spice cake). Second off, I’m not sure what the temperature was when I started running, but somewhere around 1:40/11 miles into it, I passed a church that had a sign that flashed ’65F’. I was able to get over the full feeling in a few miles, but the warmth got tough after around 15-16 miles. Of course, as it was getting tough, I ran out of Gatorade. But I did it. 20.02 miles in 2:57:58 (8:53 pace); this was only slightly slower than the first 20 miler (2:57:22, 36 seconds).
That’s it for the week. Next week is tapering, so the mileage is down a bit… and I’m okay with that for now (I’m sure I’ll have some of those taper tantrums come the end of the week). And as I type this on Sunday night, the local news has their weather terrorist on talking about snow. 80 for a high on Friday, and somewhere around 36-37 for a start on Monday. Mother Nature needs a hug or a beer or something!
Cheers!