Time to get involved

My running's been crap lately. I haven't strung together a week over 40 miles in the past month. I feel fat and out of shape.

I'll admit though, my legs are at least feeling refreshed. Hip/Glute has some linger soreness from my winter/spring training, otherwise everything else feels excellent. Now I just need to get the cardio back and onto a more normal diet.

Chicago Marathon is 16 weeks away. I need to make that shift from running to when I want to, to actually training.

Thus, summer training officially just kicked off a few minutes ago... I pushed myself back in by signing up for 4 on the 4th. It'll just be a tempo run, but this is my excuse to start running on a more steady basis. The race is in a little over a week, so I have no choice but to get back to work.

The following week, the city celebrates my day of birth with the Bastille Day 5K. Naturally, I must be there for all the people to honor me.

Game on.

Not much running, but a long awaited homecoming!

Not a whole a lot of training right now... I'm sticking to my guns and taking some downtime for a couple weeks. Nothing but garbage miles right now. I'll keep this up through next week, and then start to get back towards base mileage.

In other news:
I FINALLY got Sandy back!! Six long months after "The Crime of the Century", and she's finally home. It took forever for the shop to pull her back together. I still haven't seen a final report of everything that they did to her. A lot of parts getting shipped from Germany and possibly some unmotivated mechanics... but she's back nonetheless. Unfortunately, I feel like they missed a few things. I may wind up having to stick her back into the shop to pull together the loose ends.

SF10 - DNF

It's official - I've had my very first DNF in a race.

That's quite the honor!

Here's the thing: I went into SF10 expecting to have some fantastic race. I knew I was gonna PR that thing, since my 10 mile PR is inside of half marathon(s).

Two week earlier, my first 10 of the Green Bay Half was 57:09... and that was during freakin gale-force winds, and on a mildly hilly course. SF is a flat course, and winds were beneficial for a wisely-run negative split race. I felt like I should've been able to at least muster up a sub-57, or ideally closer to 56:30 (= 5:40 pace). GB should've just been a warm up for SF10.

Anything worse than Green Bay's 10mi split would've been tragic.

There was a head wind through 5, and I found myself running alone for about 3 of those miles. I first got dropped by faster runners (as expected), and then I gradually got swallowed by a small pack of 4 runners.

In my mind, that pack shouldn't have been near me and it initially bothered me. But, they were working together and that proved to be a much better strategy, so I accepted it.

As we turned at 5 and gained a tailwind, I realized that I was working waaaay too hard to hang on to that pack. The 6th mile was 5:38 and it felt like I blazed a 5:20. I couldn't fathom hanging onto that pace for any longer, in spite of having that tail wind. And then I got dropped. Passed 7 at 5:49. I was disgusted that I was blowing up.

I thought no way in hell was I going to be able to maintain that for another 3 miles. Everything collapsed so quickly. Like I hit a wall, but only after 7 miles... and 7 miles slower than what I ran at GB! I knew it was over. I didn't have to think twice about it. I immediately pulled the plug.

So there you have it. I turned the corner, expecting to get this big ol' boost from some wind at my back... and even get the favor of running with a few guys..., and instead I got dropped on my "out of shape" ass. I was damned if I was going to run slower than my 10 miles at Green Bay, let alone start choking out some marathon paced miles in a 10 miler. And damned I was!

For the second race in a row I had negative, self-destructing thoughts dictate how I raced... or lack there of.

I'm OK with it too. It's clear now that I did too much. With in about 2 months, I ran Cary 1/2, PR'd Oak Park 5k, PR'd Rotterdam, slugged my way though Green Bay, and then attempted SF10. That's a lot of hard running! My eyes were bigger than my stomach.

SF10 probably would've gone much better if I had been more aggressive with my training in the past few weeks - but honestly, I didn't feel like it. I've been running on empty since Green Bay. I lost the motivation. I didn't want to bother with the track or a couple mid-week longer runs. I got lazy and paid for it. It should've been either GB or SF... not both.

I need to recovery before I can do much more. I'll do a little running this week... only enough to possibly choke out the Roselle 5K... if I even bother... then 2 weeks of heavily reducing miles.

I need to get feeling fresh again before I can think about the Chicago Half and Chicago Marathon.
Split recap:
1- 5:36
2- 5:42
3- 5:45
4- 5:44
5- 5:45
6- 5:38
7- 5:49
A waaay too difficult 7 mile average of 5:42.7.
Note, I went through GB mile 8 with a 5:39 average, before getting slammed by the wind.