Sunday, July 27, 2008

Tough Run

Yesterday was one of those days where you just try to survive the race distance. I had high hopes for the Lumberjack Days 10 mile yesterday morning. The race came at the end of one of my toughest weeks of running I've had in a very long time and I found myself with almost no energy halfway through the race. Multiple times the thought of dropping out crossed my mind but I knew the answer to that would always be no.

I was able to finish fairly strong, getting my final mile down to about the time I had been shooting for the entire race. I still finished 63rd overall in a race of 1,100 finishers so that I was certainly not disappointed about. I spent the rest of the day drained so I'm going to back off a little bit this week and give myself a little bit of recovery. I may change my race plans for the coming weeks. I really want to have a good half-marathon prep race so I really know what my body is capable of when the marathon comes up in 10 weeks.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Short Race

Yesterday, my last day as a 23 year old, I ran a 5K in my soon-to-be new town, Watertown, MN. It was a decent day to race but the race seemed so short. I ran very even mile splits but felt I easily could've kept that pace for many more miles. At the start I felt really slow because all of these high school and college aged runners went sprinting out in the first mile. However, I caught a few of them about 2 miles in, even though my final time was nothing to brag about.

I recovered really quickly and ran 13.5 miles this morning to celebrate my birthday! Next week will be a real test to see what kind of endurance shape I am in and how good I really am getting at my pacing as I plan to run the Lumberjack Days 10 Mile in Stillwater. I'm looking forward to it because I haven't run a long race like that in quite some time.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Update: TCM Training

It's been quite a while since I posted. My life has been a whirlwind these last couple of months. As the summer continues on, my life will be encountering a lot of big changes. I will be moving out on my own to take on my first teaching job at Watertown-Mayer High School in Watertown, MN. I will be teaching chemistry and physical science. I am really looking forward to it and I'm excited to be moving out on my own.

In the mean time this summer, I'm enjoying my last bit of time living with my family and running around the city of Coon Rapids and the north metro. However, I'm beginning to see some indications that maybe it's time to get out of CR and move on to somewhere else. A few days ago I saw a giant banana run across the street as I approached them along my run! An odd sight to see for sure but I know I wasn't hallucinating because I was only 2 miles into my run.

I am into my full training for the Twin Cities Marathon now and have been increasing my mileage over the last couple weeks. The training has been going well but because of my summer job I have been forced to run at 4:30 in the afternoon three days out of the week and each of those days I am on my feet for 10 hours during the day before the run. It's been a big challenge but my body is finally getting used to running in the heat of the day. I would still much rather run early in the morning though.

Over the next few weeks I'll plan to post more regularly and keep posting on my training and my races coming up over the next few weeks. I will be racing three times over the next four weeks: Watertown Rails to Trails 5K next Saturday, Lumberjack Days 10 Mile on July 26th in Stillwater, and the Gopher to Badger Half Marathon on August 9th from Stillwater to Hudson, WI.