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January 20, 2008
winning is just a matter of who shows up
First, some running:
M: 7.16mi (9:05)
T: 8.39mi incl 10x[1min @5k pace, 2min jog]. avg 6:08 pace for the "hard" minutes
W: 7.18mi (9:04)
R: 7.84mi (8:18)
F: 5.12mi incl 4x[15s @5k pace, 45s jog]
Sa: AM 7.2mi incl 5k race (19:36damnit, 1F, 15OA); PM 2mi untimed very slow
Su: 7.32mi (8:12) plus a half-mile untimed warmup
total: 52.2 miles running, 5-15min of core-strength stuff every day
Despite my measly mileage these past few weeks, my legs still didn't feel great. I asked my coach about it and he thinks it takes longer to recover from a marathon than we realize, and I am still recovering. Let's hope so.
Saturday's race was nice in that I won, and I beat a very fast woman whom I never thought I'd beat, ever. It was also the first race I've won where I *didn't* lead wire-to-wire; this time I trailed the lead woman and passed her around the 2-mile mark. She's a great racer and I thought she'd come back on me, but she didn't. Not long after I passed her I started to fade; there was now no one in front of me that I could see (the next guy was about 20s ahead) and I probably lost some motivation. I heard footsteps behind me, put on the ol' "good job!" smile at the inevitable, and turned to see my friend and training partner Aaron coming. He proceeded to drag me the entire last mile, trying to get me to run faster and saying nice cheery things while I gasped and whimpered and whined. He is my new hero.
Saturday's race was not so nice in that I didn't PR. I honestly didn't know what to expect, and had no indication I could run under 19:30 other than the fact that I did it one time a few months ago. After 2 weeks of taper, after more than 6 months of hard training. Still, I'd kinda hoped to run faster yesterday.
Yesterday tinman came up with a bunch of training paces based on yesterday's 5k time. Most of the paces look reasonable, but some of the easier paces are a bit faster than my usual puttery easy/recovery paces, mainly because the first mile is *always* glacial, something between 9:30 and (gasp) 11:00 depending on how I feel. So starting today I will include an untimed 1/2-mile (or more) warmup just to get the legs moving. I must be the only one in the world who has to warm up for an easy-paced run :-)
not-running: I won't be rejoining the IT workforce anytime soon, it looks like; my old boss discovered that he didn't have any part-time work for me after all. I'm glad it only took a week to determine that. On the other hand, I took a sports massage workshop this week and it totally rocked! I'm really not the kind of person to say things like "this is it; I am home; this is what I want to do," but this is it. Really. Our class worked the race Saturday, so immediately after my cooldown I worked the massage tent for a couple of hours. It was great, and the other therapists in the class really know their stuff. Some day, one day, I want to be like them.
Posted by joe positive at January 20, 2008 6:35 PM
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Comments
Sports massage (the practice thereof) is totally awesome.
Posted by: Brian B at January 21, 2008 12:14 AM
A win, is a win, is a win... Congrats!!!
Posted by: Alejandro at January 21, 2008 10:55 AM
Joe, that's a terrific time. It might not be a PR, but it's really early in the training cycle for you; you'll be killing people soon enough!
Posted by: tuscaloosarunner at January 21, 2008 8:00 PM
First--congrats on the win! Please be really proud of yourself for racing and allowing yourself to mentally overcome the idea that you couldn't finish ahead of that other woman. Sounds like a bit of a mental breakthrough to me!
And I am right there with you. I need that 1/2 mile or so warm-up for easy runs when I run first thing in the morning. The first time I took the Garmin with me on an early morning run I just about died when I saw how slow I was going and then thought how it certainly didn't feel that slow! And I am just generally a person who needs to run slower on my easy runs than some people do. Right now I can get away with running sub-8's much of the time, but when I'm training 8:20's feels too hard for my easy runs. Last summer I saved the sub 8's for workout days and long runs ONLY and then easy runs were 8:20-8:45 pace and my recovery jogs were so scarily slow I never took a watch!
And yeah, you're still recovering. Heck, I'm still recovering from my October marathon! You'll be surprised by how things turn out in a few months, don't worry.
Posted by: Salty at January 22, 2008 11:03 AM
CONGRATS!! I have only won one race and it was FAR from a PR, but boy is it nice to be first!
Your training looks great too. I can't wait to see where it takes you. You are running less miles, but you are also running much faster paces.
Congrats on the sports massage break-through. I bet that would be pretty awesome given your understanding and appreciation of the athletic body. That is why I never go for massages - there are very few (around here) that understand that component.
You go girl.
Posted by: mindi at January 24, 2008 7:23 AM