I’m still not 100% ready to talk about Saturday’s run, but I figure I need to post something anyway. I will say that I’m glad I got my August wrap-up done on Friday.
Weight Check: 164.0 pounds, up 1.6 from last week. Meh. It was a fairly stressful week, which isn’t good for my eating. I guess it could have been worse.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 7 miles easy | 7.01 |
| Tuesday | 1 mile easy, 6 miles at marathon pace, 1 mile easy | 8.01 |
| Wednesday | 6 miles easy | 6.01 |
| Friday | 5 miles easy | 5.01 |
| Saturday | 17 miles easy | 14.01 |
Total: 40.05 miles
No, that’s not a typo under total miles for Saturday. I’ll eventually get to that.
Monday, the weather didn’t feel quite as bad as early in the previous week, but still wasn’t great. My legs were a little tired from my long run, but it wasn’t too terrible. My paces seemed fairly consistent outside of the one mile that was almost all downhill, and I kept the effort easy. I was over a minute faster than the previous Monday’s 7 miler, and it’s nice to see a little bit of improvement.
On Tuesday, the weather wasn’t great, but I’ve seen worse. My legs felt OK for most of the run, with a little bit of (understandable) fatigue near the end. I did stop for water at 4.6 miles, and I took a brief walk break at the beginning of the easy mile at the end. I managed to gradually speed up through the middle section. I’m happy with how it went.
Wednesday’s weather was still pretty miserable. My legs felt OK, though. My pace seemed to fluctuate a lot, even when accounting for hills. I tried to keep the effort easy, although I may have subconsciously pushed a little bit after starting a few minutes later than I’d planned. Overall, a fairly decent run, and none of my paces were too out of the ordinary.
On Friday, the weather was basically the same as Wednesday, which isn’t good. My legs felt fine. I kept a pretty steady pace once I got through the first mile. I didn’t push too hard, though, since I had 17 miles on the schedule for Saturday.
Yeah, about those 17 miles on Saturday…
I still don’t know exactly what to say about this run. I don’t know whether it’s too many miles, lingering effects from my surgery in January, the heat and humidity, the fact that I’m 45 now, or all of the above, but my long runs are not going well. It’s beyond frustrating. My fastest mile was 12:51, and only 2 other miles were sub-13, so it’s not like I was going too fast.
At the beginning of mile 12, after I stopped for water, I just couldn’t run. I walked for the rest of the mile, got some water, and very slowly jogged the last mile.
I stopped for water every mile, and had Gu at 5 and 9 miles (I had originally planned on having one at 13, but by that point, I knew I could only handle one more mile at best and figured I’d just save the 3rd Gu for another day.)
The weather was pretty terrible, and maybe that’s the main reason I bonked. My legs were OK at first, and they just gradually got more and more tired.
The other frustrating thing is that, going back through my runs earlier in the week, things actually went fairly well. I can do my shorter mid-week runs reasonably well, then Saturday rolls around and it’s like I forget how to do a long run. I just don’t know.
I’ve got a cutback week this week. I really hope it helps.