Change of Pace

I was only granted one day off this weekend, so on this beautiful early September Sunday...I'm sitting here in my windowless office proofreading scripts, clearing music rights and squeezing in a little blogging. I did have yesterday as my own though so we enjoyed a lovely, lazy morning before running 20+ miles in a soggy autumnal maelstrom, after which we satisfied our carnal craving for filet mignon and beer(him)/red wine(me).

The practicalities of running this many miles are still pretty daunting. Try to get 8 hours of sleep, and that's just the minimum to give you body a fair shot at recovery. Then half an hour to get ready to run (at 85 miles a week) an average of 1 hour, 43 minutes and 13 seconds. 45 minutes to shower and dress and you've already used up 10 1/2 hours of your day. 1/2 hour commute to work, grabbing food along the way, to be scarffed down at my desk to start off a minimum 9 hour workday. Lunch gets consumed this way as well, while working, and don't forget to be drinking water all along as well. 1/2 commute home and if the universe is cooperating, there's at least 3 hours left for dinner, laundry, cleaning, blogging, reading, calls home to mom & dad, conversation and relaxation with my man and finally, time to get ready to get in those eight hours of sleep. That is of course, if there isn't a second run to fit in!

In the midst of all this, it's challenging to maintain any semblance of balance. I used to have hobbies. I used to draw and paint and take photographs. I read newspapers and books and magazines...books and magazines that had nothing to do with running! It's almost a blessing that I'm having to deal with flux and upheaval at work through all of this, just to have something else to think and talk about. If someone were to place a moratorium on my ability to talk about running or work, I would simply stare placidly into space with a dull empty expression on my face. On second thought, that actually sounds really lovely, zzzzzzzzz.....

Another runner and fellow slave to the media commented to me recently, "There’s something about running here that gives you a special kind of ownership of the city." I definitely felt that today as I ran through the soggy park feeling as if I virtually had the place to myself. No one is obsessing about how they're going to look in a bathing suit anymore and most of the fall marathoners still have the luxury of just taking the day off when it's icky outside. Dog owners still had to be out there, but the social cliques that gather on the edges of the larger open spaces to chat and drink coffee while their boxers and retrievers frolic, were conspicuously absent. It's just amazing to be smack dab in the center of one of the biggest cities in the world and to feel so completely isolated from the rest of the world.

I did hit 2,000 miles for the year this week and I suppose it's likely that I'll hit 2,500 before December 31st. Those are big numbers for me and sometimes it still doesn't seem quite real. The last few days it's felt very real and it's been a significant struggle to drag myself out of bed each morning to run. Tomorrow will be a delicious day of rest, mostly spent traveling, but ending in a warm place with white sand and palm trees. We were supposed to leave today, but our flight was cancelled and plans were postponed. The upside of this is that I can go right home after work and straight into bed. The fact that this is such a decadent concept for me is a little sad, but all the same, I'm very much looking forward to it.

It started as just a dull ache yesterday morning, but then last night I was feeling it a little more and when it still felt like there was a bad bruise on my heel this morning, I pulled the plug on this morning's miles. I don't think it's a plantar fasciitis thing, since I've never had issues with that, but I'll still pull a page from Zeke's recent post and give whatever it is a chance to heal.

Everything seems a little surreal as I head into the final stretch of my second 70+ week. I'm tired, certainly, but it's a very zen sort of tired. Except for the hallucinations and the staring into space, I feel very centered and strong. I've got a worrisome soreness in my throat, but it would be weirder if I wasn't feeling some sort of physical strain these days. At any rate, the fatigue keeps my mind off of the rest of my life. Next Friday is my boss's last day at the company and there's been no sign of what the powers-that-be have in mind for me. As far as I can tell, they're content letting me and one part-timer continue to run what used to be a four-person department, but that's just a recipe for disaster as I see it. Mistakes will be harder to catch and work is bound to fall through the cracks and when it does...will that just give them an excuse to let me go too? It should all be very worrisome, but it's so easy to focus my mind on mile repeats instead.

Which reminds me. Last night's track work out was a bitch. Huuu-MID, and how. And of course the usual carnival day care circus freak show. Who knew the place to be on a Thursday night is the Riverbank Park and Recreational Center? Bring your kids, bring your in-laws, bring your games involving balls and waterguns and play them on the track! I got one real, turn-around-and-smack-your-mother wallop on my shoulder from a soccer ball on the third lap of my fourth mile repeat and shocked myself with the shrillness of my voice when I shrieked something close to "Truck!" and "Watch it, will you??" I sounded like such a harpy to myself that I was sure they'd be aiming the ball at me next time around, but I guess I scared them. One of the college track coaches commented as I swung around on my last mile, "She looks like she gonna beat somebody up!" I think I would have too. Especially since I was pissed off at myself for slacking the second and third repeats so I really did have something to prove over those last eight laps.

It all came back to bite me at 6:30 this morning when I headed back out into the park for nine more miles. I wasn't in pain, but I felt incredibly heavy and sluggish. The rising sun hung dimly in the hazy sky, a pale salmon disk you'd expect to see over the African savannah. The thick air felt exotic and foreign as well, so I tried to visualize myself as a bounding gazelle, despite the fact that I was really feeling much more like a constipated water buffalo. It was the slowest I've run in quite some time, but if you're meant to measure effort by your heart rate, then I'm sure I was still probably pushing the pace too hard. No worries though. Tomorrow is certain to be better and I'm sure it will help knowing that my easy week is just around the corner.

Now both of my heels are feeling a little achy, but I'm officially starting my taper so I really don't care. I'll stretch and foam roll and run increasingly less mileage at an easier pace and I'm pretty sure the issue will take care of itself.

My last long run went really well and I'm seriously indebted to my friend Kate for inviting me to tag along with her team up to Westchester on Saturday morning. It must have been something like the psychological boost you get when you know you're running your last mile repeat on the track, but I tackled the run pretty aggressively from the get go and the guys I was running with pushed the pace right along with me. I really tried to just stay relaxed and at a pace I could converse at, but maybe I was feeling a little bit that I had something to prove and didn't want to get left behind by the guys...while at the same time the guys probably pushed a little harder because they were running with a girl? Who knows. Whatever the reason, I think we all ran a little faster than we'd originally planned. Ultimately though, I felt pretty good about how it went and if I was a little beat up at the end, I think that had as much to do with the hills as it did with my pace. Plus, three hours of running is three hours of running, regardless of your speed.

I tried to be good and subject myself to an ice bath when I got home, but I don't think I'd really stockpiled enough cubes to get the water quite sufficiently cold. I sat in the moderately chilly water for about 15 minutes, but I don't know if there was any real benefit from doing so or not.