A Bad Friday

If you are lucky, sometimes in life you discover keen, if not profound, insights about yourself. Friday was such a day for me. Why? Because on Friday I realized my badassness is limited only by my dumbassness.

Profound eh?

And what event brought me to such an insight? The fact that I realized I was a week off on my training plan. I was supposed to go 10, 13, 15, 12, 18, 13, 18, 20, 22 (there are more, but these are the import numbers for the story). Friday I realized I had gone 10, 13, 15, 12, 18, 20. Seems I forgot about that step-down week of 13M and instead did my first 20M run early. Score a point for my dumbassness.

Therefore, on Friday evening I had to redesign my long run training plan, and I had to decide if I should run the 22M I had been preparing for all week long.

While attempting to rearrange my plan, I did desire to keep my slotted back-to-back 20M (or more) runs. This was something I introduced into my training last fall for Grand Rapids, scheduling a 20M then a 22M. I had an 8:07/M pace for my 20M and a 8:38/M average for a 2 mile shortened run of only 20M. What should be noted about the second 20M run back in August was that it came after getting a massive blister in the CRIM and that I pretty much had a runner out-of-my-mind experience where all comprehension of time was lost and I felt like I was running well past midnight even though it was closer to 10pm. The Redhead will tell you, I returned a different person than when I had left.

But I was feeling confident after my 7:10/M average for my first 20M run last week, and so I decided to go ahead and rearrange my schedule and run 22M on Saturday. I set out with a goal of averaging around 7:15/M pace, with the goal of no mile slower than a 7:30.

Despite dropping one 7:35 during mile 16, I averaged a 7:14/M pace. I’ll be doing that missed 13M next week, and my legs are eagerly looking forward to the step-down.