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November 13, 2004
Just Barely Hanging On
The alarm went off way too early this morning. Even though I was in bed early last night, I was still absolutely exhausted when it was time to get out of bed. My lack of motivation grew after I turned on the TV and saw that it was only 36 degrees and on the breezy side. Being hard-headed, I did get my layers on and went over to the long run group. I haven't been over in a few weeks since I've been doing races on Sunday, so it was nice to see some of the Saturday morning-only folks from our group.
My plan was to run 80-90 minutes since this was to be my last long run and we are on cut-back time. Before we got started, I realized that I have not run that long in quite a few weeks now since I've been racing. Two people were doing 16 miles (way too long) and most of the rest of the group was aiming for right around 60 minutes (way too short). I settled in with a group of four that dwindled to three after one of the guys dropped off because he was not feeling too good. We were planning on about 80 minutes. The pace was very fast and I was not feeling quite myself. My left leg was not sore, but I just did not have a lot of drive in my body. I think that my body has overcompensated this week in trying to overcome the soreness that I was overly tired from less effort. I was hanging off the back of the other two I was running with. I felt terrible because they had to keep waiting for me. The course we ran had a 2 1/2 mile stretch of trails where I fell way off the pace because I was so afraid of falling on the wet trail. After we got off the trail, there was a massive hill to climb and we were home free. I should mention that one of the people I was running with has been a national class runner and that person even said that the pace was fast. Two weeks ago they did this course in 78 minutes and thought they were running fast. Hanging off the back, I finished today in 77 minutes. We figured that the course is around 11 1/2 miles because we were running way under 7 minute pace.
I was a little bit on the overdressed side. Around an hour I started to get pretty warm. I had on tights, a long sleeve shirt, a fleece, gloves, and an earband. I took my gloves off after an hour, but I would have been better off leaving the gloves on and taking of my earband because my hands were freezing for the last 15 minutes.
I went to the gym and rode the bike for an hour. I made sure to stretch really well and then I lifted. About halfway through my lifting routine I got a killer headache and decided that I should go home because I really was not feeling very good. When I got back home, I ate some hard candy for the simple sugars and took a short nap which helped quite a bit.
I hope that everyone is enjoying their weekends!
Posted by Blondie at November 13, 2004 12:59 PM