Well, I promised everyone that I would keep you posted on my training progress, so here goes. I ran 20 miles last week. 20 miles!!! Me! Wow!
Tuesday was my tempo run at 4.5 miles, and that went not-so-well. We had our annual awards presentation Tuesday morning, which meant I had to forego my usual work-from-home and drive into the office. Then my boss won this HUGE award so of course we all took her out to lunch. And that lunch was my downfall. Instead of listening to my usual voice of sanity, I got something a co-worker recommended and it was wonderful..... until it was sitting in the bottom of my stomach like a chunk of lead 4 hours later. I sucked it up and ran, but it was not a comfortable experience. Live and learn.
Wednesday was our Team in Training track practice at Memorial Park. I was a little nervous about that because I am still serious about completing a 2nd round of Cathe Friedrich's STS. And Wednesday is leg day for me. Knowing the team practice was a walk/run, I pushed myself until my legs were SHAKING, then toweled off and drove into the city for practice. Live and learn again. The cardio really helped break the latic acid loose from my tired old legs and I felt great at the end. Go Team!
Friday was my looooooong run. I woke up early, fueled properly, and then procrastinated until I absolutely, positively HAD to start or I was out of time for the day. The dread factor had kicked in and I was really nervous about the run (especially after the whole Tuesday experience). Finally, I psyched myself up, stuck a Gu in the pocket of my super cute Lululemon running capris, strapped on the iPod and hit the bricks with the mantra: start slow, finish strong. With each mile that passed, I told myself, "now you just have to do that X more times." I had a little victory party when I passed the halfway mark, rallied myself past the 2/3 point, and kicked the last half mile. I ran 9 miles without stopping. What an accomplishment.
This week will be my drop-back week, as I will be running in the Houston Rodeo Run 10K on Saturday. I have a time goal in mind, so I want to taper off the miles and focus on performance. Wish me luck!
That is great Mona!! Good to see you so motivated and committed. So did you get into New York Marathon? My only advice is to err on the conservative side and give yourself time to get to where you want to be. What I have found after 4 marathons and interacting with a lot of runners... some much better and some not so much better than me is that "race management" is extremely important and dismissed by a lot of people. I myself have tried different approaches to race management and not seen different results in terms of time..... (probably because of lack of training).... but the one thing I can say is I have always finished within the the time limit ;-)
ReplyDeleteJudging by your commitment and training, you will certainly do great things in your running events... just be patient and give yourself time to be really good ;-)