Signed up for my next half to try and knock myself out of this training funk and get back on track. Told them I expect a 1:40 because I’m a smidge delusional.
It’s race week for me. Half on Saturday, full on Sunday. Can’t wait to get out there - getting antsy!
I’ve got a half coming up a week from Saturday, and I feel like my training has been shit. First I had to recover from a marathon, then I was traveling, then I got COVID and had to recover from that, now the air quality is a disaster. Super frustrating, but I at least feel like I’ve still got a lot of my marathon fitness, so fingers crossed for a good day?
I haven’t noticed any impact of the shit smoke air on my runs this week (in Wisconsin on Lake Michigan which is an area the local news has been pressing as having some of the worst air in the world almost like it’s an accomplishment lol) but man it has made the visibility like a dense fog and running on country roads and suddenly having vehicles come out of nowhere with no fucking lights on has been stressful. Last few runs I did without music so I could at least maybe hear vehicles come flying out of the haze.
Boom! Did the half in 1:47 yesterday and the full today in 3:55. Time blew out a bit today (was hoping for 3:45) but in the end the goal was to finish both and I did!
2 days later I’m feeling good and am going to give it a light shake out tomorrow morning. Bummed that the Melbourne marathon in October is already sold out. I don’t think it normally even sells out, let alone this early. So I think I’ll be backing up at Sydney in September which should be a good one as they’re doing a real push as a nominee to become the 7th major.
There was a hit and run death yesterday of a pedestrian on the road about 1/4th down the road from me that I run on at least twice a week. A bit surreal to have something like that happen so close on a road I use constantly for the same thing as this person was.
I feel like we need way, way harsher punishments not only for hit and runs, but for people who can’t keep their fucking cars between the lines on the road. About time we make it way more severe to put pedestrians at risk.
I talk to a lot of road bikers around here and they’ve all told me stories of people throwing bottles and cans at them. I’ve not had that, but I’ve had a lot of cars come up behind me (whether I’m running on a sidewalk or a shoulder) and blow their horns to try and scare me. People suck.
People yelling out of cars at you while you run is so fucking dumb. You’re real cool, no one’s ever said ‘run Forrest run’ before! ♂️
Thought I’d share a pretty cool story from the weekend. I was struggling hard at the end of the full on Sunday. The last 6-7km I was running to the km mark and then I’d walk while counting to 100. Once I hit 100, I’d go again. When I got to the 41km mark, a friend of mine was there. She ran onto the course and started running with me and yelling at me - ‘Come on Mikey! You’ve done over 60km! You’ve got one left!’. This caused the guy next to me to ask ‘You doing the double too?’ (Keep in mind 10,000 people did the half, 6,000 did the full, and only 170 did both, so the odds of the person next me doing both were slim). My friend then yelled at us both ‘Alright you two, get each other home!’. So stride by stride, that’s what we damn well did!
Got 18 in this past Saturday at a better pace than I was anticipating. Off to a good start for Columbus in October, considering I had to take a few weeks off after the half marathon in June bc of rib contusions.
I've got a steps contest at work. Kind of the perfect formula to really focus on my running and see what I'm capable of in terms of training 5-6 days/week
We have those all the time where I work and because everyone knows I run I get asked to join like 35 teams. Nice to be liked but I even get asked by people I have never officially met, they just somehow know that I run so reach out once every 3-4 months with the same question to join their group lol
Did a mile race and a half marathon last week. Definitely still on the rebound from having COVID two weeks ago, so these races were way tougher than I was hoping. Still ran a 4:45 and a 1:15:53, but was planning to go for some big PRs before I got sick. Next time, baby.
But, real talk, need to figure out some speedwork in my current training routine. I just can't motivate myself to do sprints.
Haha, sorry, not my intention!! My PR is only a little faster than that (1:15:30 at the same race last year) but I blew through the halfway point at my marathon earlier this year at 1:15:57, so I figured I’d be in good shape to shave at least 2-3 minutes off my personal best. Heart/lungs weren’t quite ready for that plan, though.