10 mile dam loop
Well, that sucked. First, let me get my excuses out of the way:
1. I was dehydrated and didn’t realize it until I started running.
2. The 85% humidity didn’t help.
3. I woke up at 3:30am and didn’t get back to sleep until 6am.
4. I really didn’t feel like running.
5. (later)
So anyway, I got myself up and ready to run. Headed downtown to do the ten mile loop from MoPac to the dam - something I haven’t run in quite a while. This was a big deal, since it was going to be the first time I’d hit next Sunday’s race distance since my injury.
As I started out, I was feeling tired but otherwise decent. After a couple of miles my shins were getting a little sore. Not bad, not painful you understand, just making themselves known. Not a huge deal. After four miles, I felt a couple of twinges from my mid-back. That’s more of a big deal. They might have gone away, but I decided to play itself and walk for a little while. As soon as I tried running again, they were back - so I scratched the run. Total: four miles, 9:30 pace.
Now, on the long walk back to my car, I took some time to think about what happened. So here’s reason #5. When I started running after my injury, I was careful to develop a schedule that ramped myself up to marathon training without ever going over about a 12% weekly mileage increase. Trouble is, what with one thing and another, I’ve been missing one or two runs every single week. This week was the first time I hit every single run, which means that I was actually increasing over last week by 10 miles (even with the shorter run today), and over my peak by about 10%.
My body just said no. And that’s okay. I’ve redone my schedule for next week though, because I really, really want to get a 10 miler in before the 10 mile race. I may rethink this, but the race is on Sunday and I’m planning on doing a slow 10 - with plenty of fluids this time - on Wednesday. I’ll cut my other runs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday down to three miles each, will still puts me at 32 for the week. That’s a 20% increase over this week, but most of that mileage will be easy and I think its a reasonable compromise. As always, advice is welcome. Oh - and I am not planning on doing Spin next Friday either.
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Oct 17th 2004
4:04 PM
Sorry to hear the 10-miler sucked. But I loved the post about the lactate threshhold… nice job, and I found it fascinating stuff. I hope the plan works out for you!
Oct 18th 2004
10:32 AM
Do you really need to do a full 10 miles before the race? Why not an 8 or 9 miler? I would hate for you to do too much before the race…and race-day magic will give your feet wings to make up the difference.
And, to answer your question about the CLIF bar…it was attached to my Gatorage bottle with an elastic band and it was a “security blanket” in case I had a real bad food crash. I hardly even noticed it!
Oct 18th 2004
1:27 PM
No advice here… just a bit of envy. I’m at 7 for my long runs, with a goal of “10 by Christmas”. I feel pretty confident, and that leaves me no more than (and hopefully less than) a 3 mile ramp up in January and February to get to the Half. I still can’t believe it some days. My dad was a marathoner when I was growing up, and to think I could be running one next year is pretty exciting.
Good luck!