« A Good Sign of Dehydration... | Main | Must Always Forget Something »
November 06, 2005
Pre-Empted
Grrr...Although the results have been posted on-line, live, I was looking forward to watching the highlights of the marathon on TV this afternoon. When you have hardly any life and are follow running, things like that are really exciting. So, I had the TV on and was ready to watch, and...there was tennis on. OK, it was live and local, but the marathon was scheduled. There was a comment that said something to the extent of because the match took an extra set, they would shortly go to marathon coverage. Well...the match didn't end until after 2:45, so they never got to marathon coverage. I'm sure that it was a very good tennis match, if tennis is what I had tuned in to see, but I had tuned in to see the marathon and that is what I wanted to watch. After the tennis match, the went straight to NASCAR coverage, so I didn't get my running-TV fix. Grr....
This morning was the first of my practice runs on the course where we'll have our club cross country race in a few weeks. Running there is something that I absolutely despise. In order to have any chance of running reasonably well, I decided that running on the course a few times might be in order. The state cross country meet is on this course next weekend, so hopefully the conditions will be better in a few weeks than they were today. Most of the first half of the course has terrible footing in the first place and right now it is covered with about two inches of wet leaves, making it impossible to see where you are about to step. I do realize that cross country is not supposed to be easy and all, but the conditions of the course at the moment are pretty dangerous.
I decided to do a double course this morning. Since the start and finish are not in the same spot, I ran the course forwards and then turned around and ran it backwards. While running, I did formulate my plan for the race, pretty much the same plan I have every year when I run it. Although the biggest and hardest hill is at about halfway and I suck at hills, I know that if I am somewhat close to the front at this point, I can do it. Once the footing gets better, at the massive hill, I am comfortable. The part of the course that is hardest mentally for most people is actually where I am the strongest and have always picked off lots of runners. It doesn't matter yet, the race isn't for a few weeks, but because it combines two things I hate (hills and grass) I have to get ready for it.
In all, I felt better than yesterday. My body is still on the dehydrated side, but I've been working on drinking more and more water today. The unusually warm fall has not been helping matters any. I can't remember the last time we have had this many warm days in November. The month is still early, but the forecast is still looking warm as of now.
I did a second run today pretty much out of boredom and OCD. There really wasn't anything to do, the Eagles aren't playing until prime time and who knows how the rest of their season is going to be. TO is indefinitely suspended, Donovan is injured, David Akers is just coming off an injury-to put it mildly, I don't expect them to return to the Super Bowl this year. As far as the OCD is concerned, 70 miles looks so much nicer than 65 in the log book, although both are pretty nice numbers for weekly mileage. J probably didn't want the extra miles today since I'm supposed to be cutting mileage and increasing speed the next week or so to race more. My only excuse is that the extra runs I do definitely are not junk miles-they are at the same pace as my other runs. Running slower than 7:30 is so uncomfortable that I'll usually just stop instead of trudging on.
This afternoon started out not feeling too good. My first thought was that running the cross country course this morning really wiped me out more than I expected. As the run progressed, my body started to feel better and better. I was going to cut it short, but by the turn around point I was feeling fine. It must have just taken more time to get the blood flowing. The wind had picked up more and it was starting to get dark, so I had to get in. I tried to keep everything relaxed because I think that some of my poor workouts on Mondays are from running so much mileage over the weekends. Last week Sunday was a really big day, so it did make sense to not feel very good the next day.
Hope that everyone enjoyed their weekends!
Posted by Blondie at November 6, 2005 03:08 PM