Friday:
After a super-hot track workout last night, it was nice to just have a very chill-paced run through the streets of Bellevue with Nathan and Josh. The schedule called for 40-minutes at easy pace with 6 x 100m stride outs.
We met at the Bellevue United Methodist Church parking lot, and I ran in my Saucony Hattoris. After about 30-minutes we took a little detour down a just completed new section of the Harpeth River Greenway. We didn’t have much time to explore, but it was exciting to see this new running space.
At the end we did our strides in the parking lot, and other than one stride out, Nathan and Josh blew past me every time. Even with this I still felt good throughout the run and the strides. In total we finished just under 5.2-miles with an average pace of 8:59 per mile.
Saturday:
Today’s schedule called for a 16-mile long run at easy pace. Our group had a marathon interval workout planned, but John wanted me to stick to the easy run since I had struggled some this week. However, I did run in the same location as the group so that we would occasionally cross paths.
Well, today’s effort can easily be summed up in three parts:
- Felt relatively great during the first 12 miles, maintaining a smooth 8:30ish pace.
- Felt awful for miles 13 and 14, and dropped to a 9:00ish pace.
- Walked most of the final 1.5 miles back to my car
The thing about the late run fail today is that it was predominately self-inflicted. It is true that the conditions were nasty, as they have been recently, with high temps, high humidity, and full sun throughout. However, I did absolutely nothing else to help myself finish the run strong. This includes:
- Getting less than 5 hours of sleep last night (out late at the Sounds game)
- Not eating anything before the run, and only drinking about 12 oz of Gatorade.
- Not drinking enough fluid during the run, only stopping at miles 3 and 12.
- Not taking a gel during the run, and only having sports drink at the end of mile 3.
Looking back on this, I have no idea what I was thinking. The lack of sleep was mostly unavoidable, but everything else should have been a no-brainer with today’s schedule and conditions. I really hate carrying fluid, and I just thought I would be able to route my run in such a way as to make use of the water fountains throughout Edwin Warner Park. However, even if I had made that happen, it still doesn’t explain why I didn’t at least carry a gel with me.
Anyway, I started out from the Edwin Warner Nature Center, about 20-minutes ahead of when the group was starting, and ran a 3-mile loop on the Harpeth River Greenway back to the Nature Center. The group was just starting their warmup when I got back, but I stopped and got some Gatorade anyway, before heading back onto the greenway. I caught up with them at their staging area, and ran part of their first interval with them, but at an easy pace. When they turned to head back to the staging area I kept going to the end of the greenway and out onto Harpeth Bend Road.
During our run on Friday, Nathan, Josh and I had noticed the city had completed a new section of the Harpeth River Greenway with an entrance on Harpeth Bend Road. We were not able to run the full distance of it on Friday, so I thought this would be a good opportunity today to see how far it went. The only problem was there was no access to fluid throughout this area.
On a side note, the Harpeth River Greenway is now completed in three different sections, but none of them are connected. The first starts near the Edwin Warner Nature Center, and is approximately 2-miles long. This new section is about a mile down Harpeth Bend Road past the end of the first section, and is approximately 1.25-miles long. The final section is on the other side of Old Harding Road, about 1-mile from the end of the second section, and is approximately 1-mile long. It will be really nice once all of these are connected into one continuous greenway.
Anyway, because of my little detour to explore the new section of greenway, I was not able to get back to water until I had completed almost 12.5-miles. As mentioned above I had felt relatively good throughout the first 12-miles, but then all-of-a-sudden I just hit a wall. I stopped at a water spicket in one of the picnic areas of Edwin Warner, and stuck my head completely under it with the water turned on. After this point every step felt like the “survivor shuffle” that is frequently employed at the end of a marathon.
My pace didn’t drop off too drastically, but I felt awful. I saw some of the folks from our group as I was in the middle of mile-14, and by this point I was starting to feel nauseated. Once I completed 14-miles I stopped for a minute and took inventory. On Thursday night, in response to my poor workout on Monday, John had talked to me about listening to my body and knowing when it was time to just shut things down. Well, I really felt like this was one of those times because of how bad I felt.
I walked up a hill for about a 1/4-mile and then attempted an easy run again once I was going downhill. This lasted just over 3/10-mile before I gave it up for good and walked the rest of the way back to my car. When I got back I was pretty dejected, but this quickly turned into anger at myself. I know that my problems today are NOT due to over-training or significant fatigue, but are simply because I was NOT SMART! I’ve got to take this as a learning experience and then move on.
In total I finished just over 14.3-miles with an average pace of 8:40 per mile. Also, for the week I completed just under 55-miles, which makes three consecutive weeks with 50+ training miles. My monthly total for July is just over 201 miles with two training days remaining.
Beast Mode….Sputtering, Sputtering, Sputtering, ON!