This week felt like a recovery week after a tough previous week. Didn’t feel motivated or strong on any day. Ate like a pig all week. Fat, hurt and slow is no way to go through life.
Tuesday was some half-breed circuit that wasn’t really a circuit. Started with a brisk 2 mile run around the track “at a comfortable pace”, which turned out to be 6.27 for the second mile. Not that comfortable. Then we did one lap of circuit where, as with every circuit before, I was told that I did all the drills wrong. Finally came the rough stuff. A couple minutes of what we called in high school chargers or mountain climbers. Next we bounced and hopped around for 15 minutes … forwards backwards, one leg two leg, sideways wrongways, red leg blue leg. We finished up with some tough ab work, better known as “cohr work!” Afterwards Noel and I ran an extra three miles on the trail, and that night and the next day my hamstring really hurt, even into Thursday’s tempo run.
Did I say tempo run? Yeah, it wasn’t so bad, but I wasn’t overly pleased. I actually beat my previous time (and PR) by 5 seconds, finishing the four miles in 25.20. Splits were 6.32, 6.17, 6.15, 6.16., though I was less pleased with my effort and results on this faster run than the previous run. I ran with Mason again on this run, but this time he left me in his dust on the second half, finishing like 30-40 seconds in front of me, even though we were roughly even at the turnaround. I guess I was happy about keeping a consistent pace, but I could never really turn “it” on as you can see. I kept feeling myself want to slow down, and each time I did I consciously pushed myself to keep pace. But I was never in too much pain, and that means I was never going to go faster. Again though, my hamstring has been sore all week.
Which leads me to today’s long run. By the end of the 9.3 miles, my hammy had tightened up so much I could barely get my leg to turnover. I limped the last half-mile. Pat and I ran the northern portion of the AT&T half-marathon course, and it was a pleasant enough run, though 2 miles in I declared I was going to loaf it, and I feel like I accomplished that goal. Overall time was around 1h13m, and I don’t think we ever did faster than a 7 min/mile. Oh well, the run’s the thing.
Hopefully I can get motivated this week. May be tough with the holiday and the kid’s birthday. Interesting that you can tell the quality of my running by the quality of my blogging. Forgive me for the blandness. Maybe I need a race to get both of them going?
