Last week was back to square one. Time to start thinking about training for something again. I finally wanted to race again.
Admittedly, I had a pretty full first half of the year. Three full marathons in 98 days. I never planned it that way, it just happened. Then, the 500 Festival Mini on May 2nd, seven days after the last full. I'm one to chase times but not numbers. I ran the Mini because I was registered. The original plan had been to try to run a half PR either at Derby, the 500 Festival, or the Seymour Half on May 16th but since I didn't BQ in Napa I had to run the full at Derby. After that my legs were toast. I jogged through the 500 Festival Half purely on residual marathon training feeling like it was not the brightest thing to do then decided that I really didn't care to collect any more meaningless finishes. I pulled out of the Seymour Half as well as the Indiana Timing Memorial Weekend Triple (5K, 4 mile trail, and 1 mile) - all races I had pre-registered for - and decided not to register for anything else until I wanted to race again.
I think watching Western States was what did it. I finally wanted to get back into a training cycle. Then I perused my calendar... and then my work calendar. Not a lot of choices at this point. I settled on Monumental. It is roughly 18 weeks away.
So last week was square one again. The week before the first week of training. Time to start running more consistently again. I watched the finish of Western States online then went out for a run on Sunday, taking the rolling hills by my house. I was still thinking about Western States last year when I realized I was already at the 2 mile mark. I guess I was so deep in thought that I don't even remember how I got to where I was, but there I was already at the 2 mile mark. I got to 3, then turned around and went back home for 6 miles for the day.
Monday I was suppose to take my older daughter and her friends to King's Island for her 16th birthday but it was pouring rain so we decided to postpone the trip. The kids watched movies at our house all day and I went for a 7 mile run.
Tuesday was the same. I just started running and ended up doing 7 because it just seemed like a good number.
Wednesday was a 12 hour work day and decided it was a rest day since I was already up to 20 miles for the week which is the most mileage I've done in a week since the Derby Marathon in April.
Thursday I saw my chiropractor. I hadn't seen him in over a year. He spent a full hour with me and it was wonderful. I ran another 7 miles after that.
I couldn't decide what to run on Friday. 7 miles a day seemed to be a good number for me but I didn't want to go crazy my first week back either. Plus, I decided last minute to do a road race on Saturday as a kind of a time trial to see what kind of shape I was in and I had to go to work so I ran 3 miles instead.
Saturday the alarm went off and I didn't want to get out of bed. I thought about blowing off the race and just running by myself at a reasonable hour. However, I had to go to work again by 2:30 pm so I knew if I didn't get out of bed NOW, I'd probably not get a run in, so I climbed out of bed and went to my race.
It was the 4th of July Sparkler Sprint. I haven't done a 5K since April 4th so I really had no idea how this was going to pan out. I decided I'd be happy with anything that started with 25.
So... get there and find out the course had to be rerouted due to flooding and it's a bit short. Then, stupid Garmin won't track my distance. It's the same problem I had in Charleston. The watch says I have a satellite but when I start running it will only track the time so I essentially am wearing an expensive stopwatch. I discovered this on my warm up. I had planned on a 2 mile warm up, race, then 1 mile cool down to get 6 miles total for the day. Since the stupid watch wouldn't track distance I decided to just go out on the course and run 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back.
Now it's race time... I get to the 1 mile mark. Watch is reading 7:06. No flippin' way! The course markers have to be short too. 2 mile time is 15:06. Finish time - 22:56. The course was only 2.85 miles. I ended up running an 8:03 pace which translates to a 25:00 5K so I guess I should be happy I'm not terribly out of shape.
Nora Jo, me, and Jane
So 36 miles for my warm up week. Now I just need a training plan.
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