Mon: 8.5 miles
Tue: 7.5 miles
Wed: 8.5 miles
Thu: 3.5 miles
Fri: 6 miles
Sat: 7 miles
Sun: 14 miles
Total: 55 miles
The best laid plans of mice and men… Thanks to a number of factors, this past week did not go according to plan. It was always laid out to be a down week while I spent some time vacationing on the Outer Banks, but the mileage was supposed to be around 65 total and there were supposed to be a couple of workouts in there as well. Needless to say, the original plan did not come to fruition, so warning, here come the excuses.
The week started off well enough. Although I was feeling tired from traveling, I had logged a decent long run the day before with Keith Gray, an excellent Masters runner who lives on the island and serves as my training partner whenever I visit the Outer Banks, and we made our way through the government shutdown Cape Hatteras Lighthouse area and campground right according to plan. However, when Keith and I headed out to run on Tuesday, a Nor’easter had hit the island and it was raining fairly steady with winds blowing in the 20-25 mph range and gusting much higher. A good example of the effects of the wind would be as follows: at one point we ran about two miles straight into it then turned around and ran those same two miles back, all at the same effort. The wind at our backs made 35-40 sec difference per mile! I was supposed to conclude Tuesday’s run with three 10 sec flys, but by that point my shoes were completely soaked and I’d had enough of the weather, so I called it a day.
Wednesday I had planned on doing my first workout of the week, but I awoke to even worse conditions than the day before. This time we were smart enough to keep the wind at our backs the entire time and my wife, Leslie, was gracious enough (as always) to pick us up at the finish so we could do just that. Doing a workout, however, would have been difficult-to-impossible and pretty pointless as well. There were numerous places where the road was under a couple inches or more of water, and while we dodged as many of the deep spots as possible, there was definitely no avoiding getting completely soaked.
On Thursday, the weather finally broke at least a little and I thought I could maybe go ahead with the workout I was supposed to do the day before. I headed out from the house where we were staying, which is located in a subdivision, only to find the main road under a foot or more of water. It was completely impassable in terms of running and even driving through it was an adventure. I’m talking probably a mile and a half or more of a stretch that was completely under water. At this point I was pretty frustrated and not feeling that good on top of it, so I just did a loop through the subdivision (even had to alter that due to flooding) and called it quits, officially declaring it to be a recovery week. Accordingly, I just did fairly short, easy runs on Friday and Saturday before concluding the week with a long run back in the hills of Fincastle on Sunday.
I was disappointed with the way the week turned out, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. One of the few advantages of being a “veteran” runner is you learn some lessons over time, and one of those that I’ve learned is sometimes you just have to step back, regroup, and then attack again. In the end, being basically forced to take an easy week was likely a good thing. My body probably needed it regardless, but in addition, I was struggling this past week anyway. I think it was the effects of the travel plus my diet and sleep being off, but I just felt flat and tired all week. Most of my runs were extremely comfortable from an aerobic standpoint, but my legs just didn’t want to go, making the efforts seem harder and longer than they were. If I’d try to push through all that, the end result would have probably been a mediocre week last week followed by a really bad week this week and maybe even an injury. Sometimes you have to be smart not just tough.
This week I’ll look to get back on track and start making some progress. As I’ve mentioned lately, I’m very motivated right now, and while I was sitting around killing time during the heaviest of the rain last week, I developed some really good goals for myself that I’m looking forward to pursuing with everything I’ve got. More on that to come.
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