Change of Pace

I'm sort of using my body as one right now. I feel like I step outside myself a bit as I evaluate what running two or three hours a day does to me. It's shocking how well the actual physical plant is holding up. My shins are really tender and the big toe joints on both feet ache pretty badly if I don't massage them a lot, but that's about it in the way of pain. My brain seems to be taking the brunt of the effort, as I feel a little druggy and out-of-it most of the time and I keep losing track of what it was that I was saying in the middle of sentences. The good thing is that this training schedule has almost completely eliminated my social life, so I don't really have many conversations anyway. If a certain news network's website either doesn't change much in the evenings or occasionally has an odd selection of stories on it, that might be somewhat related to this whole effort as well.

Now, as to the effects of the training on my running. Signs point to good. I went into yesterday's 10K expecting to race the first 4 miles at 6:30 pace and then feel my legs flag under the fatigue of the past week's workload. I was ready for that; I figured it was to be expected.

I took off at a strong, but reasonably comfortable pace, planning on staying within range of a local runner that usually beats me, but not by that much. I noticed on the first mile that she pulled away a bit on the uphills, but I caught right up to her on the flats and the down slopes. The race's theme was Scottish week in New York, so I'd worn a kilt for the occasion. I was aware that the other runners around me might not be taking me very seriously, but I figured I'd just have to accept feeling a little embarrassed whenever the point came when my legs inevitably lost their get-up-and-go. I hit mile one in 6:25.

Everything felt comfortable, so I keep pushing at the same effort, concentrating mostly on breathing as deeply as I could. I hit mile two at 6:20 pace. Mile three has a massive downhill curve to it, so I slipped by my benchmark competitor along here and stayed right on that same 6:20 pace. Mile four dragged the field back up the other side of the hill we'd just come down, so I knew my "running partner" was still hard on my heels. Either she was feeling the effort as well or just decided to bide her time because I fell off pace by 20 seconds for mile four.

Here it comes, I thought, and just concentrated on holding pace as best I could. Remarkably, my legs recovered pretty quickly from the uphill and again, focusing on the breathing, I set my sights on another woman I could see up ahead.

I'm not saying the effort was pleasant at this point, but obviously I was able to maintain it. I did not feel at all as if I'd just spent the past week covering 100 miles. The only real repercussion that I would blame on the mileage came in the last 50 yards of the race. I'd passed the woman up ahead of me pretty decisively with about 600 yards to go, but then right there at the end both she and the woman I'd paced off of for the first half of the race blew right by me. I don't think it even crossed my mind to try and stay with them - there just wasn't anything there to work with. And besides, I could see I was going to break 40 at that point and I was more than happy with that. I knew it was only the second time I'd done that in a 10K, but didn't realize that I'd even slipped under my old PR until much, much later when I got home.

Now this is where my accomplishments become truly impressive... After the race I headed out to Queens to continue the Scottish celebrations by sampling haggis for the first time at speedyscot blogger Yvonne's apartment. She and her husband laid out quite the spread and I will announce for the world to hear that despite the photo below, (which totally cracks me up) haggis is quite tasty. And then, after copious amounts of food and a rather strong serving of mimosa, I had to trek back into the city and go to work for eight hours. Talk about endurance. For the record, I'm planning on sleeping a minimum of 12 hours tonight.