Monthly Archives: August 2010
Farewell August
Missing one long run — a big one at 16 miles — caused me to miss my August goal of 110-120 miles by a lot. But I won’t let that one run define my month. If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would run more than 100 miles in both July and August, I would have thought you were crazy.
I end August at 100.6 miles — 0.3 more than July. I had my longest run in nearly 3 years. I can’t be disappointed in that. It’s my third triple-digit month of the year. After 8 months of the year, I’m at 710.9 running miles for the year. One run isn’t going to drag me down.
It’s also worth noting that even though my end-of-the-month sickness impacted my latest attempt at the 100 push-ups program, I did 450 push-ups throughout the month.
As the calendar turns to the last one-third of the year tomorrow, I am looking forward to more consistent cooler weather. There have been signs recently of fall coming, but temperatures in the 90s this week have been a friendly reminder that it’s still summer. For September, I obviously want to continue to increase my miles as the Richmond Marathon gets even closer. I’m not sure yet if I’ll get my first 20-miler in or not since I missed last week’s run — I just have to see how the next couple of long runs go before deciding on that.
I’m really looking forward to September and seeing how things go. I’ve mentioned before that I want a sub 4-hour marathon in November and with cooler weather on the way, it’s time that I pick up the pace a bit. My runs in the past couple of months have gotten slower in the heat. There have been a few runs that were a bit sluggish, and I don’t want to slip into just logging miles. The more aware I am of that, the better I can make my runs.
As I have felt for much of the year, I think the best is yet to come.
Self doubt gone in a flash
4:04 p.m., my post on Twitter: It’s funny and sad how a few days of being sick makes me want to stop marathon training. It’ll pass, I hope
What?
I left work early today after feeling craptastic for the past two days, and up and down for a week straight. I probably shouldn’t have even been at work today. I even tried to call the doctor around 9 a.m. to figure out what was wrong with me, but fortunately really didn’t have time to go today. With a little less than 11 weeks until the Richmond Marathon, getting sick and staying sick is not what I need.
Fast forward about a half hour.
I made a stop at Walmart, picked up some B12, Naked Juice and a regular Pepsi. Oh, and a new thermometer because ours was broken. No fever, thankfully.
Fast forward two hours.
I felt tremendously better.
Fast forward another hour.
I ran a couple of miles with my dog and felt pretty good. I figured I could go do another mile … and another … and another. 5 miles down.
Who knows if I’ll pass out in a half hour and sleep like crazy, or if I’ll feel bad tomorrow, but something worked tonight and it’s time that I don’t let that self doubt creep back again.
No long run
This up and down week of feeling bad, feeling good, feeling bad, and so on ended on a low note today. I skipped my long run this weekend. I woke up yesterday feeling bad and decided to go ahead and move it a day. After shaking things off in the morning and running 4 miles yesterday I felt pretty good. Then when I woke up around 5:30 this morning, I knew there was no way I could run 16 miles today. Perhaps I could run something later in the day to not feel so bad about skipping my long run. Perhaps enough to go ahead and get to 100 miles for the month and pass 20 miles for the week.
But no … it was not meant to be.
I’m not going to get too worked up about it. There are still 11 weeks to go to the Richmond Marathon. Marathon training is long for a reason — I have no problem with missing a long run or two along the way. I am a little frustrated that last weekend was so great and I didn’t get to follow that up this week, but I was not about to jeopardize my long-term health to force a long run today.
So now, I have to put this behind me and move on. I have to pick back up, move my 16 miles a week and just keep going.
Mile 700
Here is what I ran into at mile No. 700 for 2010:
Seriously … a stop sign. But there’s no stopping me now. I’m now less than 300 miles away from my 1,000-mile goal for this calendar year with more than four months to go. Despite still not feeling 100 percent today — I’d say I’m about 90 percent — hitting this milestone tonight feels awesome.
The not-as-bad blahs
Back in June, I got completely worn down after a trip to Ohio. To this day, I blame many things for that, including myself for not going to the doctor a second time more quickly. This past weekend, my son was obviously feeling bad, taking earlier-than-usual naps and saying “boo-boo” and pointing to his throat. Then Monday, it was my turn to have a “boo-boo.”
Playing it safe, my son went to the doctor yesterday even though he seemed to be doing better. The doctor said there’s a 5-7 day virus going around and that days 2-3 are the worst and he was probably better. So, he is pretty much back to normal today. Yesterday, though, must have been the big low for me. I slept a couple of hours in the morning, another half hour in the evening and went to bed around 9 p.m. last night. I really didn’t want to get up for work today, but there was some things I really needed to do, so I slogged my way into the office.
By the end of the day, I didn’t feel nearly as bad and even now I feel considerably better than 24 hours ago. I’m not 100 percent yet, but it’s been a much better experience back in June when everything seemed like such a mystery. It’s just frustrating that a week after running 30-plus miles for the first time in a very long time that this hits.
Today marks three days in a row of not running — the first three-day break since early May. While I may feel a bit down, I can feel that my legs are refreshed and ready for another 30-mile week; I just have to rearrange Monday to another day. Fortunately, Tuesday is a usual off day anyway.
This puts me behind on the 100 push-ups program just a bit. There’s part of me that wants to get started on week 4 tonight, but I just want to get completely healed up. I may do a test and repeat week 3 again … I’m not really sure right now.
Getting sick is a nice reminder that my health is my No. 1 priority. A few off days, or even a bad week, isn’t going to make or break anything. I’m coming up on some key weeks with my marathon training and I need to make sure I’m 100 percent healthy to do this.
Longest since …
14 miles in 2:15 around Bedford. Longest training run since fall 2007. I realized this week that the last time I trained for the Richmond Marathon that I didn’t document my experiences very well. Now that I have a decent phone I can take with me and not have it get in the way, I’m going to start taking it with me on more of my runs. Down the road if I’m debating whether to train for a certain race or not, I want to remember scenes like this:
Or, better yet, this. You can never have a bad run when the Peaks of Otter are within view:
Meanwhile, my run around Bedford looked like this. The hill mapping on Daily Mile isn’t quite accurate, but it was still a crazy hilly run. I hit the biggest hill around mile 9, but pushed through it pretty well.
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