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April 01, 2006
Not a Joke
I ran four miles today. It felt awful. Most of the awfulness was probably my own fault.
We (more like J told me) on Wednesday that it's time to do a race. The ideal situation would be a 10K on Saturday. We prefer Saturday races because then Saturday and Monday aren't shot. We looked around. The best we could find was a 10K trail race today. There was no way on earth that was going to happen. It would not fulfill the objective of racing this weekend. We decided to do the next best thing-a race on Sunday. We didn't think that a 5K was a good idea. I haven't really done enough fast workouts yet to be able to race a 5K, so we were looking for a slightly longer race. It appears that the 10K is a nearly extinct racing distance in our area, maybe not in other regions. I was willing to drive almost an hour to race, but there wasn't anything that popped up.
We aren't peaking for tomorrow. This wasn't really a taper for it, just a one day cutback. We were discussing my issues on Thursday nights. My main theory is that I'm not getting enough sleep during the week. Last night definitely had enough sleep, close to eleven hours. Hopefully having two days nearly off will help me feel normal again.
I'm not really sure what my goals for tomorrow are. It will completely depend on how I'm feeling. If it's anything like the past few days, my expectations will be very low. Even though it was only four miles, today was sort of a death march. Part of it was my own fault. I had on long sleeves. It was 65 degrees out. I was chilly when I got started. Two miles in, I was roasting. It was windy, again. Hopefully the wind isn't present tomorrow. It doesn't seem to bother me as much in races as it does in training. Maybe it's the adrenaline.
At my turnaround, I had to stop to fix my shoes. My feet are pretty skinny and for some reason after a few weeks, my shoes always seem to get wider on me. I had to relace to make them snugger. The toenail on my second toe on my right foot is suddenly black. I discovered this because (1) it's sore (2) I need to repaint my toenails, so I took the nail polish off last night. I think that it isn't because my shoes are too small, instead they are a bit too wide, so my foot is sliding around in it. Hopefully, today's relacing fixed this problem.
Good luck to everyone who is doing Cherry Blossom this weekend. One of these years I'll get around to doing it. It just doesn't seem to fit the schedule that I've been following, I'm not truly recovered from my spring half-marathon and it could be detrimental to my spring 10 miler. Of course, I'm still not recovered for tomorrow, but whenever I do longer races I have higher expectations than in shorter races. Shorter races take the place of workouts, longer races are something to peak for.
Today is a sad day-we lose a precious hour of sleep. Remember to set your clocks an hour ahead tonight!
Posted by Blondie at April 1, 2006 02:12 PM
Comments
if you race tomorrow, i will be eager to hear how it goes!! are you planning on a marathon this year, or mostly 5K, 10K and halfs? By the way, i agree that strong winds totally suck!
Posted by: bridget at April 1, 2006 08:46 PM