Keeping my Head Above Water (Ha Ha)

It's been a pretty grueling stretch for me since I last updated this thing. On Friday I did 15 miles at a relaxed pace, which turned out to be a 6:39 pace. Coming off a fast 6 mile tempo run the day before, I was pretty happy with how easy this run felt once I got into a rhythm. Everything is so much easier once you get that rhythmic running back.

Then the fun started. Friday night the Chicago area started getting hammered with rain. At about 2:30AM on Saturday morning, I got up and decided to check to see how the basement was holding up. It wasn't. Within a few minutes of me getting into the basement, the sump pump became overwhelmed with water and started overflowing. Kelly and I started working feverishly to get everything out of the basement and onto higher ground. While we were successful in that regard, it was still a frustrating couple of hours as I sat and waited for Home Depot to open as I watched helplessly as my basement filled with water. Luckily I was the first person in line at Home Depot to rent an industrial strength sump pump and by about 8AM the water had been pumped out of the basement. However, since we were forecasted to get rain for the rest of the weekend, the struggles continued to stay on top of everything. At one point, we had 5 sump pumps running in the basement trying to keep the water from overwhelming us. It worked, but it wasn't easy.

Through all that I did get in an easy 10 miler on Saturday. The plan for the weekend was to rest up and do a long run with at least 10 miles at Marathon Pace on Sunday. I was thinking of incorporating Sunday's workout into the Chicago Half Marathon, as it seems much easier to run at MP in a race setting, but with all the excitement on Friday Night/Saturday, I was too tired to even think about going to a race.

So Sunday arrived and I had no option but to try and tackle the run by myself. Since most of the trails around my house were flooded, I had only option for this run and that was to do it on the roads 5 times around a 3.65 mile loop. I did one warmup loop and then tried to settle into marathon pace. It just wasn't happening though. I came through the first fast loop around 5:55 pace. The winds had picked up at this point in the day so I was stuck with about a mile and a half with the wind at my back and then the same distance with the wind in my face. I tried to increase the pace on the second loop, but again, it just wasn't happening. The pace on the Garmin stayed stuck right at 5:55. For some reason, I just couldn't bring it down. Finally on the last loop, I decided to just go as hard as I could for the first mile and see if I could move off of the 5:55 overall pace. It seemed to work as I was able to bring the pace down without working too much harder. I pushed as hard as I could on those last 3.65 mile and finally brought the overall pace down to 5:48 when I hit 11 miles.

I know this isn't the ideal way that this workout should have been done, but after an exhausting couple of days, it was all I could do. I must admit, I've never incoporated marathon pace into my long runs before. To be honest, having done it a few times now during this build-up, I'm not a big fan of it. It's a very difficult workout for me from a mental perspective and I just don't know if the physical benefits are that great. I feel like I could get very similar results from doing a hard tempo run on a Saturday followed by a nicely paced long run on Sunday. Anyway, I'm committed to the program, so I'll continue to do these, including the dreaded 23 miler this weekend with the last 4 at MP. Ugh.

Here's how the week went down:

Mon: 6 Easy miles
Tues: Pyramid Workout Around 5:07 pace for everything 200-400-800-1200-1600 up and down
WedAM: 10 @ 6:52 pace
WedPM: 7 Miles Easy
Thurs: 10 W/6 @ 5:34
Fri: 15 @ 6:39
Sat: 10 @ 7:05
Sun: 18 W/ 11 @ 5:47 pace

Total: 87 Miles