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December 18, 2004
Big Reunion
This morning was the first morning that I have gotten myself out of bed to meet the early morning Saturday group. Most mornings in November I slept in or raced, so there was no point in getting up to run long on Saturday if I was trying to race well on Sunday. After my race-fest in November I took a week off last week. Most of the fall, we only had a rather small group for the Saturday morning run. This morning I was the first to pull up. The first thought that crossed my mind was that everyone saw how cold it was out and decided to wait to run until later in the day. Was I ever wrong. In the next five minutes pretty much every person who ever runs with us on Saturday morning pulled up. There were about 25 of us who headed out on the hilly route this morning. It was really cool to see so many faces that I don't see on a regular basis. I'll also get to see a bunch tonight at the track club party.
I was on the "hour plan" this morning. Some people in our group were planning on running a whole lot longer than that. I'm not really sure why, they aren't running any races in the near future. The group I ended up with was running quite fast. For the early part I was feeling OK, but going up one of the hills the poor diet that I have been following caught up with me. One of the guys who was trying to run with us stopped and walked up the hill with me. Lucky for us, the other three running our route had to stop at the top of the hill for a pit stop, so we were able to hit the reset button and regroup. By the time we hit the last twenty minutes, I was feeling a little more like myself.
It was c-o-l-d this morning. I wish I had on more clothes. Tights, a long sleeve shirt, a fleece jacket, a windbreaker, a hat, and two pairs of gloves just was not cutting it. Others had on much less, but my feet were numb. This has been bothering me for the past few days when I run. Today I had on thicker socks and that helped a bit. I think that I am just so cold all the time that when the temperature is below 30 I just can not get warm.
Anyway, the run this morning would not be considered long by any means. It was my longest run of the week, therefore it is the long run. We aren't exactly sure how long this course was, but our guess is that it is definitely over 9 miles but less than 10 miles. On the way in I was running with V and A and we determined that we were running well under 7s. We ran at least that fast earlier in the run and we were out for just about 66 minutes.
When I get stressed I have a tendency to not eat. It becomes a chore and the thought of eating is just not appealing to me. I don't like to eat in the first place since I have spent so much of my life getting sick after eating that I have a negative association with food. I have been trying to force myself to eat more today because I am feeling weak and run down. During cookie baking this morning I ate plenty of rejects.
My mom and I went accross the street to bake cookies with our neighbor. We had a blast. T has had breast cancer three times and is just the nicest woman in the world. She will give you the shirt she has on if you need one. T also loves to cook and bake. We don't eat many cookies since my mom and I don't eat many sweets and four years ago my father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. So we made some cookies that I am taking to the party tonight and some for us to keep for the holidays. My brother and his girlfriend are coming and she has never had some of the cookies we used to bake. It was nice to bake with someone else because we didn't have to keep all of the cookies.
The guy called me yesterday while I was out grocery shopping. I learned from prior experience that talking on the cell phone in the grocery store is a bad idea. It is just so loud in the store, trying to carry a basket, pick up items, etc is overwhelming. He knew how tired I had been and how busy today was supposed to be, so he just said to call whenever I got the chance. I think that I'll play it safe and call tomorrow since I have to start getting ready for the party pretty soon.
I have yet to buy the gifts for the party tonight. I'm going to do that on my way over. Nothing like truly last minute gift buying. My family is completely done and so is all of the shopping for me.
Between now and the New Year, I have to start thinking about what races I want to run next year. There is still plenty of time because until at least February I'll just be doing base building. J called me the other day and told me that before I start to figure out which races to focus on I have to read my log books for the past two years to see what worked and what did not work. One thing that I do know is that I need to work in short cycles, no 16 or 18 week training cycles for me. More like 6 and 8 week cycles. I ran my half-marathon PR off of about 5 weeks build-up. I can get in good shape really quickly but then can not hold it for long. I also think that I need to start to do drills this spring. We planned to do that in the fall, but I was struggling so much with that sprained ankle that it was not feasible.
Well, it's just about that time to go and do some ab work, eat a light dinner and get some Christmas gifts!
Posted by Blondie at December 18, 2004 03:39 PM