This is the time

Many people like to run at certain times of the day. Some people like the charge for the day a morning run gives. Some like to run in the evening to help decompress from the stress and hectic schedules they endure. Others run whenever they can. I guess I'm in the whenever they can camp.

While I'll do it for my long weekend runs in order to beat the heat, I have a hard time waking up godawfully earlier than the already godawfully early time I get up just to run in the morning. And I have too many family responsibilities and scheduling conflicts to be able to guarantee time to run in the evening. So I take advantage of a very small window of opportunity to exercise after work and before descending on the evening every day.

Exercising in the mid to late afternoon doesn't bother me much, but it does provide a lot of opportunity to think about what I'm going to be doing before I do it. If it's a tempo run I spend time during the day mentally preparing myself to endure a faster pace than I'm used to. If I'm going to do speed work I think about how I'm going to breathe through the intervals. If I'm doing something easy I look forward to plugging the earphones in and zoning out for a few miles. In all cases, I'll visualize my form and think about how I'll feel after the workout.

I think exercising after work also helps mentally. After a long, hard day in the coal mine it's very easy to say screw it and head home to get some unwind time rather than sweat through another workout. But it takes a certain strength to cast those thoughts aside and do what you know you're supposed to do. And the fear of an upcoming race distance you've never run before up doesn't hurt either. But then it's also very easy to hit the snooze button at 4:30am rather than get up to go run so what do I know.

In the end, I think we all just fall into a routine that fits us best. Mine just happens to allow for afternoon workouts. When people say they don't know how I can run every day at that time I just say that I don't know how they can't.

And chances are they don't work out at any time during the day so what do they know?

Running through another week

It's from one extreme to the next this week. While I had a too nice and easy 4 miler yesterday to complain about, tomorrow it's a rough and tumble 6 mile tempo run which will include 4 miles at about my 10K pace (7:57/mile). It will be my longest Thursday run to date, as well as the longest distance I'll have to maintain a relatively fast pace since I started training for a marathon. What's up with that? It's just topsy turvy week for the running me.

Then on Sunday it's 16 miles, which will be another milestone distance for me. By two miles. And I have no idea where to run it. I don't think I want to hit up the NCR trail again, but I may. And even after I finish it I'll STILL have only run 10 miles less than a marathon.

I've vowed to evaluate where I'm at after this week and press on for the marathon or wuss out and downgrade to the half marathon in October, but right now there's one question that keeps going through my head, even with as long as a 14 mile run behind me: how in the world am I ever going to run 26 miles?

If I can answer that after Sunday I'll press on. If I can't will determine how strong my mind is. Will I suck it up, drive on unsure and just do it, or will I be a baby and take the easy way out?

At this point I don't know. I'm not above going bib and pacifier shopping though.

Ramping up the running slowly; backwardsly, even

Week 5 of marathon training kicked off with some cross training shenanigans yesterday and a 4 mile run today. Coming off a stepback week and having my long Sunday run be "only" 7 miles, I'm a little confused as to why my program calls for a pretty short easy run as a follow-up. Even after I ran a 14 miler the Sunday before last my next run was still 7 miles. Granted, today's run is supposed to be at a pace 6 seconds per mile faster than I've been running, but that's a fairly tame incremental increase in speed and I don't think it merits a much shorter Tuesday run than I've been running (to this point my shortest Tuesday run has been 5 miles).

These are the moments where I just repeat to myself that people who know what it takes to run marathons devise these plans and until I'm able to figure it out on my own I should give them the benefit of the doubt.

That doesn't mean I don't wonder what's up though...

Stepping through a stepback week

I thought I'd take it easy today because it's a stepback week and I only had to go 7 miles for marathon training. I slept in until about 6:00am and when I checked before I left the house just before 6:30 I saw it was already 77 degrees with 78% humidity. D'Oh! Statistically, this is the hottest week of the year around here so I guess it makes sense that it was that miserable at that time of the day. It doesn't make sense that I didn't take the heat and humidity into consideration before the run though.

To make matters worse, there was not a cloud in the sky and the sun was starting to rise over the trees as I walked out the door. Not a good sign. Since it was "only" 7 miles I thought about packing it in and heading to the gym to run the miles on a treadmill, but I miss running outdoors so I drove on.

Quite honestly, I felt pretty good. I was supposed to run a 9:28 pace, but I decided that since it was a relatively short run I'd just go with whatever felt comfortable and not worry about timing specifics. I had my Garmin Forerunner on to make sure I didn't go too too fast, but I wasn't concerned with much else.

I finished 7 miles in 1:03:40 for a 9:03/mile pace. The last couple of miles were hot and hard because of the heat, but even those were run in 9:12 and 9:10 which wasn't too shabby I didn't think. If it were about 20 degrees cooler I think I could have smoked those 7 miles (well, smoked as smoking pertains to me).

Then again, the run took enough out of me that I wound up taking a 3 hour nap in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. That's kind of uncharacteristic of me.

Oh, well. That's one run down and still like 97 to go until the marathon in October. Hopefully they all feel like this 7 miler when I run them.

Toiling on the treadmill

Nothing exciting to report about my marathon training during this stepback week. Today was a 6 mile easy run, which I did indoors due to high heat and high humidity. I will admit that these are b-o-r-i-n-g days in the gym. To combat that some I see how high I can ramp up the incline on the treadmill without making my heart explode.

While my heart didn't explode, it was one of the more challenging 9:22/mile pace runs I've had in a while. In fact, for an easy run it wasn't all that easy and my knees are sore.

But it's over and tomorrow is a blessed day of rest. I'm feeling a little burned out on running this week so I'm thankful I only have 7 miles to do as my long run this weekend.

Maybe those people who devise marathon training programs know what they're doing.