MEC Race 4

After the last MEC race, I have to admit that I was a little worried about how I would fare today.  But the weather was perfect and the trail was flat.  Today's race was a 15 km out and back along a beautiful trail in Musquodoboit Harbour.

As always with life, my training has fallen off a bit and I haven't done a long run in 3 weeks. Today is the last long run before the Valley Harvest Half Marathon, and the schedule called for 20 km. At one point this week we had entertained the idea of finishing the 15 km and heading back out to do another 5 to get in the full training run.  Once the reality of today set in however, there was no way that was going to happen.  At the 13 km mark I was ready to call it quits and sit on one of the nice benches that were along the route and have a good cry. I wasn't hurt, or even sore from running, I was simply convinced that I couldn't do it.   I worked hard to get out of my head and to keep just putting one foot in front of the other. The next 1.5 km were some of the hardest I have ever run.

The last .5 km was one of the best times I've had running, even though I couldn't breath and had to use my asthma inhaler.  2 friends - Jeannette and Teresa - who had already finished their races, walked back out onto the course to meet me.  I'm pretty sure if they hadn't I would have given up and walked the rest of the way.  The only problem was that I got all emotional seeing them and started to tear up, which triggered an asthma attack.  Teresa talked me through some calming, breathing exercises and I got things under control enough to run the rest of the way to the finish line, with friends on either side of me.

I finished the race with a time of 02:38:30, which is right on par for where my pace is these days, so I'm now feeling better about my ability to finish a half marathon in just 14 days!

Weeks 8-13 Training

Well, these updates fell off the radar pretty quickly!  Luckily it doesn't mean that my training did too, though I really haven't followed my training plan as well as I had hoped!  Life really does get in the way.

Week 8 started out well.  I ran the MacPass miles for the first time and pushed my 12k long run out to the Monday. I didn't miss any other training that week till Saturday when we were in a mostly minor car accident.  The car ended up being a write off, but nobody was seriously hurt and I was only stiff and sore for a few days.

Week 9 was car accident recovery and vacation. I did run 3.5 kms on my birthday, but that was it.

Week 10 was the rest of vacation, but I managed to get in 2 runs (6k and 8k) after I got home.

Week 11 only had 2 runs - a 16k long run and a 6k run mid week.  No really good reason for skipping the rest.

Week 12 started to look better with a 17k long run, a 5k run and a night of hill repeats.

Week 13 fell of the rails again.  I skipped my 18km long run and only made it out for one clinic night with a 6k run. Then we travelled to BC for the weekend.  With 20+ hours of travel over 4 days and a 4 hour time zone difference, I didn't even bother packing running gear.

You'll notice during all of these updates that there is no mention of going to the gym. I haven't been to boot camp since August 10th, but fully intend to get back at it this week.

I only have 3 weeks left until the Valley Harvest Half Marathon.  That gives me a total of 13 training runs, so I really can't skip/miss any of them!