It has been an interesting week since winning the Cox Sports Marathon this past Sunday. Thanks for all of the comments and congratulations over the past week. It has meant a lot to me, whether it has been in person or on the phone, through email, comments on this site or on others. It’s been a pretty good week that way, and I appreciate it a lot.
Now that my goal marathon for the Spring is out of the way, my next goal is to finally run a sub-16 5k this Summer or Autumn. I have 3 races targeted starting in late August, so my priority for the rest of this month is to recover from a relatively tough training schedule over the past 6 months. It has been one of the most strenuous winters in terms of how much work I managed to get in since I graduated from college, and was well worth it. Now, my body needs a little break.
To that end, I have taken it pretty easy this week. I went for a pair of 2 mile walks with my wife when she needed a break from studying for her law school exams, and took Tuesday off completely from working out.
I originally planned on going for a swim on Wednesday at lunch time, but a migraine late in the morning caused me to change my mind. I think I’ve figured out what caused it, and I blame voo-doo. When I got out to my car that afternoon there was half of a snake up on the roof. Actually, it’s still there. About 5 inches of it (including the head) were right over the driver’s side door; no idea where the other half is.
I got out for a 4 miler last night with the coaching group through Maine Running Company. I led the group that is racing this weekend on a tempo run, and just let myself fall back to folks running at slower speeds so that I wouldn’t be tempted to pick up the pace myself. I felt pretty good for the most part, although both achilles were aching by the end of the run. I’ll have to monitor that.
I did finally get into the pool today at lunchtime, and despite not swimming for 6 or 7 months I don’t seem to have lost much. I swam 1250 meters in about 29 minutes, with at least a minute standing around in the pool convincing everybody to circle swim as more people kept showing up. It left me pretty tired.
This weekend I am going to take it easy. I’ll be volunteering at the Sea Dogs 5k in Portland on Sunday morning, so if you are in the area and want to race then say hi. I’ll be at registration at 6:30 and then watching traffic during the race itself. The only exercise I plan on getting this weekend is to mow the lawn after I get home on Sunday afternoon, although I might take the bike out for a short spin. It’s been even longer since I’ve ridden than it has been since I swam.
Looking forward, the Back Cove weekly 5k series begins again next Wednesday, so I will be running those again every week. I don’t expect to start doing any real speed work until July, so I will probably take at least the May ones easy and then maybe put a few pickups in throughout June.
I do not plan on doing a lot of racing this year. Right now, it looks like I will be doing a 6 mile trail race in June, a 10k and 5 miler in July, and of course the Beach to Beacon in early August. The first 3 races will serve to tell me what sort of shape I am in and to make sure that I am where I want to be fitness wise at that point. I’ll be racing Beach to Beacon all out, but will aiming to start my peak in late August. Once I get past those 5k races through September, I will figure out what other races I want to do in the Autumn and whether I want to run another marathon this year or not.
Thanks again for all of the kind words this week.
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