Training Log: The Final Countdown

Well, we're in the home stretch, I suppose. It's Wednesday night and the 500 Festival Mini Marathon is Saturday morning. The last week and a half of "training" (I use the term loosely) haven't been exactly what I'd planned. But hey, we go to race with the runner we are, not the runner we wish we were.

You may recall that the last run I posted about was the Sunday before last when I had logged 11.86 miles (albeit split between two run with about 20 minutes between them). My intent was to get in two more runs between then and the race: another long one and then a shorter one so that I was relatively fresh for the race.

Yeah, best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

Last week was just unbelievably crazy-busy as we prepared for last weekend, which was Parents Weekend at our school. Among other things, I was working hard to prepare a Senior Tribute for my 14 soon-to-be-alumni--the tribute is basically a picture slide show in which I recap the 4-year journey and say nice and true things (and sometimes things that are both nice and true) about each of them. To be honest, I agonize over it. I guess it always comes out well, because parents and students seem to like it, but I'm always sure that I'm going to leave someone feeling short-changed no matter how hard I try to get it right.

Which is all just another way to say that the whole project ends up taking pretty much all of my time from the time I start it until it's time to present it. Every year, I'm literally making changes right up until the time I head over to the meeting. All of which is just to say that I never felt like I could take the time to go for a run that whole week, especially not Thursday or Friday when it felt like it was time according to my training plan.

Then the weather was lousy Saturday morning and I was on duty Saturday afternoon from 2:00-midnight. It rained all day Sunday, then Monday I worked and drove out to Ohio Monday afternoon/evening (so no run). Finally on Tuesday I scraped out some time in the afternoon--after it stopped raining and warmed up ever so slightly.

Given how close the race is getting, I didn't want to do a long run, just something to remind my legs that they've got to be able to do some work. So I ran for 76 minutes (goal: 75) which Google Maps tells me was 7.28 miles (pace: 10:26, which included some time walking to my car, getting a drink, and taking off my jacket, not to mention time running painfully slowly into the wind and/or uphill).

So all in all, it was exactly what I wanted it to be (except for not really being when I wanted it to be, or the larger plan that I had intended). It was a decent run, and I didn't injure anything or come away with any blisters or hot spots or other things that are likely to give me trouble Saturday. .