Weekly Wrap-Up: October 24-30

The New York City Marathon is one week from today. (On a related note, I don’t think I’ll be posting my Weekly Wrap-Up next Sunday.)

I’m not really nervous yet. Mostly at this point, I’m just wondering how it will go. I’m watching the weather. I’m not going to jinx it by saying anything, but the fact that you don’t see me complaining about rain/wind/heat/cold should tell you everything you need to know. Then again, things can definitely change in the next 7 days. Mother Nature’s gonna Mother Nature.

I mentioned last week a potential family gathering this weekend, and sure enough, I drove over to Raleigh Saturday for my nephews’ baptism. Yes, both of them in one ceremony. While I was in the church, I didn’t get struck by lightning, so there’s that. Also, my nephews are the best.

Toe Update: No toe pain. Occasionally, I feel the inflamed joint. It doesn’t hurt. I wouldn’t even call it discomfort. I just…feel it. I don’t notice the same non-inflamed joint in my right foot. As long as there’s no pain (knock on wood), it’s not going to affect my stride, and I should be OK (knock on wood some more).

Also, I stopped taking the industrial strength anti-inflammatory drugs on Friday morning. That meant that when my family went out to eat Saturday afternoon after the baptism, I was able to drink a Big Boss Angry Angel Kölsch. Normally, I think it’s a decent beer. After not having any beer for over 2 weeks, it was glorious.

Weight Check: Normally, when I do my official weigh-in, I write the number down somewhere and refer to it when I write this post. In spite of the fact that my official weigh-in was Saturday, and my write-up is being done on Sunday afternoon, I didn’t need to write anything down, because I wasn’t going to forget this number: 159.9. Holy crap! There was maybe a day or two during my marathon training last year where I dipped below 160, but it never lasted, and all my official weekly weigh-ins were over 160. By the way, that’s a loss of 3.2 pounds since last week.

Now, this was from Saturday morning (pre-run), so it doesn’t include yesterday’s 5 miles, but it also doesn’t include the soda I drank to stay alert while driving, or the big meal yesterday afternoon, or the fro-yo last night with lots of toppings, or the big breakfast I had this morning. (Is it too early to start carb loading?)

Still, I’m really happy with the result. For the rest of this past week, I limited myself to one can of Mountain Dew on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I stayed away from junk food, and tried not to snack too much. It worked, in spite of a significant reduction in miles.

This Week’s Runs
Day Scheduled Total Miles
Monday Easy 6 6.01
Tuesday 1.5 mile warm up, 2 miles at Threshold (10:30/mile) with 2:00 recovery, 1.5 mile at Threshold with 1:00 recovery, 1 mile @ Threshold, 1.5 mile cool down 7.87
Thursday Easy 4 4.01
Friday Easy 8 8.01
Saturday Easy 5 5.01

Total: 30.91 miles

Monday was nice and cool. My performance, well, as I put it in my notes, I’ve had better runs, and I’ve had worse runs.

Tuesday was the last of my possibly too complicated workout runs. They seem to work, but I still think I could come up with some more simple workouts that still make me better. My intervals were 10:20/10:18 (average 10:19/mile), 10:18/10:11 pace (average 10:16/mile), and for the last one, 9:49(!). So I finished strong. The extra mileage at the end was just me trying to get home. By the way, it’s nice to have a cool down that weather-wise actually feels like a cool down.

I generally don’t pay attention to the number of calories burned, because I have no idea how my Garmin calculates it, but I did notice for this one it said I burned 999 calories. Guess I should have run another .01.

Wednesday was a planned rest day, but it was definitely the coldest morning of the week. I do believe that if I had run, it would have been my first run in long sleeves in months.

Thursday was the treadmill. You know the drill by now, mentally excruciating, but easier on my legs physically.

Since I had my trip to Raleigh planned for Saturday, I swapped my last two runs of the week, and Friday became an 8 miler. I hate adding on to my neighborhood run to get to 8, since it either involves two trips up the really big hill, or more repetition than I’d like in the flatter parts of my neighborhood. I went with the repetition. The weather was a little warmer, but still didn’t affect me. I did OK. I somehow managed to finish in exactly 1:30:00. I don’t really pay attention to my times, only my distance, when I’m running, so I’m not sure I could have done that again if I tried.

Finally, on Saturday morning, I did my 5 miler that had been scheduled for Friday. Weather was nice, legs felt OK, and I ran fairly well.

Next Week
Monday: Easy 5
Tuesday: 1.5 mile warm up, 3 x 1 mile at Marathon Pace (11:00/mile) with 1:30 recovery, 1.5 mile cool down
Thursday: Easy 4
Friday: Easy 3
Sunday: 2016 TCS New York City Marathon

I probably should note that my actual Marathon Pace probably won’t be as fast as 11:00/mile, but that’s what I’ve been using for my workout runs. Also, in case you’re wondering, this is what I consider this a more simple workout.

That Easy 3 on Friday is in all likelihood going to end up being 3.1. There’s something about my internal wiring that, barring injury or other extenuating circumstances, I can’t just stop at 3 miles, I have to make it a 5K. (A similar thing happens when I’m scheduled for 13 miles, and I almost always go 13.1 and make it the half marathon distance.)

I’ll have one last post near the end of the week before I leave town with my last minute thoughts about the race, information for anybody who wants to track me, and possibly some freaking out.