Falling Behind While Running Ahead

http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/pfchangs09/ayates

Eeek! I am falling behind in my blogging again! Sorry to all of my regular readers (if I have any), but I will try and catch you up on how things have been going in my little running universe.

Columbus Day Weekend: Running is For the Dogs

For Columbus Day Weekend - and my wonderful husband's birthday - a group of my college friends decided to rent a cabin in Cooperstown, NY and take in the baseball festivities. I had never been there before, but the town is quite adorable, and somewhat Gettysburgish in its quaintness. We passed time seeing the sites, taking a brewery tour, eating lots of food (of course), and playing cards in our campground's Adult Room, which was nothing more than a few couches and a projector screen TV.

Since I couldn't run with my team, I decided to get up on Sunday and run in Cooperstown. I had mapped out a route on mapmyrun.com, which I thought would get me around just fine. Perhaps I should have printed it instead of trying to commit it to memory. In any case, things started off well because Susan accompanied me for the first 2 1/2 miles or so. After she returned to the cabin, I attempted to remember the route, but wound up on a lonely - and very creepy - dirt road in the woods. The road eventually let out on a more open road, but by the time I hit a lake and a State Forest, I knew that I was completely lost. During that time, I was also chased by dogs on two separate occasions, so I was not exactly a happy camper. Fortunately I had my cell phone with me, and after placing a call back to the cabin, Tim was able to use the GPS to locate me. He said the same thing happened to him not too long ago, so fortunately nobody razzed me too much about getting horribly off-track. That's the last time I run alone in the wilderness!


Saturday, October 18, 2008: Has anybody seen the water stop, or the starting point for that matter?

On our way to this training, Erin and I got horribly lost and wound up taking a joyride throughout the district of Columbia. I definitely should have brought Samantha - the new GPS that I got Dave for his birthday. We eventually found our starting point at about 8:00, 15 minutes after we were supposed to be there, when we actually should have been early. It turns out that a bunch of other people got lost too (including Andrea, who didn't get there until I had almost finished my run), so nobody had started running yet. The coaches made the announcement that half marathoners were only supposed to do a recovery run of 6 miles, and that the water stop was the turn-around. This would not have been a big deal, had the water stop set-up person not gotten lost in the park! To make a long story short, I wound up running right past the place where the water stop should have been, and did somewhere between 7-8 miles instead of 6. I kept up a really good pace, though, and I also spent most of the time chatting in Spanish with another runner. My first bilingual run - yay! This was definitely one of my more achy post-run days.


Saturday, October 24th - Eight is Enough

This past Saturday's starting point was much easier to find, as it was in my hometown of Alexandria. It was drizzling as I did my eight miles, but I didn't mind. I guess if you run in a hurricane at the beginning of the training, it puts everything else into perspective for you! Andrea couldn't be there, so I did the first few miles more or less on my own, with the exception of a run-walker who I chatted with on occasion when her intervals placed her near me. She gave me really good advice: I need to figure out my pace, and during the race I need to look for the people who run holding pace numbers. Apparently there will be different people running with signs that say "8 minute mile", "10 minute mile", etc. I need to find my guy (probably 11 minutes), and stay within eyesight of him, so that I don't get so excited on race day that I run too fast and tire myself out. I've heard that it is pretty common to use up a lot of your energy in the first few miles because of all of the commotion around you, which actually makes your pace a lot slower once you've tired yourself out. Hopefully this won't happen to me.

On the way back, I ran with a really nice woman named Elizabeth, who ran at pretty much the same pace as me. It definitely made the time pass a lot quicker than during the first four. I can only imagine how quickly my weekday runs would fly by if I just had someone to run with!

This coming Saturday is a 10 miler. My first double-digit run...oh my goodness!!