Better Two Weeks Out

Having an "off" day can happen on any given day. The goal of any race, but marathon races in my case, is not to have that bad day come race day. I'm still hoping to avoid that. I am also hoping today counted as my bad day. Like the title says, Better Two Weeks Out than to have it happen on the 20th.

The workout would serve as my last long run and it would be a negative split run with the second half at or near marathon goal pace. (the verdict is still out as to what that will be) When I woke up I could hear the howl of the winds and it was my wife who said, "I sure hope those winds are out of the northeast." They were close, an easterly wind would be smacking me in the face the entire warm up. (reports had the wind at 21 mph, with gust up to 30 mph!) In hind site this may have taken more out of me than I thought at the time. I did manage to run 7:10's into the wind until I reached McQuade Harbor after starting at the top of Lemon Drop. (22 mi. mark at bottom) 

I was mentally shot. When I reached McQuade I really wanted to jump into the van and call it a day. My legs felt decent but my stomach and back were a bit sore. (maybe the 2.5 yrds of gravel we spread out yesterday had something to do with that) Kari told me to just forget about the warm up and to start moving back towards town and things might get better, and not to focus on the splits so much, just go by effort. She was right, if the workout was going bad, maybe I should just run on effort back to the start and be happy today wasn't June 20th. 

So back towards Lemon drop I started after a quick bathroom break in the parking lot. It's amazing how the mind changed literally from one second to the next. I was no more than two minutes into the faster stuff and all I could think was to hammer the miles back just to make up for the terrible trip up the shore. First mile: 5:56. Not too bad, but I did have a crazy tail wind. I did manage to run pretty decent given the hand I was delt and ended the day with a solid 16.5 miles.

I felt like I never did "hammer" on the return trip and had some solid miles to show for the conditions. Here were my last eight: 5:56,5:46,5:51,5:57,5:51,6:03,5:52,5:41

*for those of you who are running grandma's, don't panic when you see your twenty mile split, that mile is a harder one with a constant uphill grade. (my 6:03)

Totals: 1:49:39   16.5 miles

Weeks Totals: 68.8 miles

Years Totals: 1204.7 miles