I’m starting into the third week of training, and nothing’s new. It’s like getting into the seat of a car on a very tall roller coaster after a long winter + fucking virus + long winter break. You know you’ve done it before and it’ll be a thrill, but there’s still that ‘holy shit’ feeling.
Fortunately, roller coasters tend not to run when there’s a few inches of snow on the ground covering a sheet of ice. I’ve had to move two runs to the dreadmill thanks to poor weather. Those two days were fortunately separated by two days of outdoor running, once in 19F weather (luckily my Gatorade didn’t freeze, that was a 14 mile run) and once in slush… it was around 37F but there was an inch of snow.
This week is like going up the hill. You know the coaster can’t go backwards one it starts. It keeps clicking up, notch by notch, until it reaches the top and crests the hill. Next week starts going down with a 16 mile long run. Since the Pig was cancelled, I rotated most of my long runs through 12, 13, 14, and 15 miles. Running 16 miles is like a coaster I’ve ridden before but haven’t in a while.
In other news, I signed up for the BAA 5k. Since the penultimate goal is a BQ Marathon time, I figured I might as well sign up for a BAA race.
So I have two virtual spring 5ks – the Bockfest 5k (March 1-7) and the BAA 5k (April 16-18).
I did manage to finally add some crunches to my strength routine. We’ll see if that sticks. I’m going on a likely-flawed approach that working out muscles tends to improve that part of the body. There’s plenty of people to tell me I’m wrong, but knowing what my legs look like after thousands of miles of running, I’m willing to try this.