Running & Racing

Friday, February 8, 2008

Pre race training dilemma

I still struggle with how much training I should do the week before a race (half to full marathon). Prior to last month’s marathon, I ran a moderate 10.5 miles on Saturday (8 days before the race) and an easy 7 miles on Tuesday. That left 4 days off before the race. By race day my legs felt great and I had a great run.

This week I tried running a little harder mostly because I am only running a half but also I wanted to try a different approach.
Last Saturday I ran 12.5 miles (5 easy, 7.5 at race pace).
Monday I ran 4.5 miles most of it near 5k pace.
Tuesday I intended to take it easy but that turned into an 8 mile run (last 5 at race pace)
Thursday I ran an easy 5. I was still feeling the effects of Tuesdays run though.

I have two full days of rest before Sunday’s race so I will see then if my hard running was a good thing or bad.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

I run alone

I am one of those people that likes to run alone. It’s my escape from the rest of the day where I can be alone with my thoughts. It allows me to run when I want, where I want and at what pace I want to run.

I am fairly self motivated and do not need someone else pushing me to run that day or to run father or harder.

But by not having running partners I miss out on the opportunity to talk about my training runs, my goals, lessons learned, my excitement for upcoming races. I miss out on starting a race with people I know or talking about details during the race with someone who shared the same or similar experience.

My partner, who does not run, will listen when I ramble on about a great race. But it’s really just a one-way conversation about something that I know he would have no interest in if it wasn’t for me talking.

I have realized that if I’m ever going to have an outlet then it will be online. I haven’t found much at this point outside of blogs like this where one person is sharing their thoughts. Ideally I would like to find an active message board with local competitive runners. If this doesn’t exist then maybe I need to be the one to get a site up and running.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Gasparilla Half

A few more days until my next big race. I didn't plan to run yesterday but I put in a strong 4.5 miles.
I'm a little torm between getting ready for Sunday's half and starting to train for 5k's. I don't think speedwork will hurt my race and even though yesterdays run was good I have a long way to go before I'm ready to break the 20 minute 5k barrier.
I will probably continue with my plan to run today and tomorrow. I need to make sure I take a few days off before the race though.