This week’s stats:
83 miles
16M with 4 x 2.5M via 557-603 for first two miles, 247-252 for last .5M
12M MLR
20M with 6M warmup, 13M tempo via @ 604, 604, 557, 603, 610, 600, 603, 559, 554, 600, 555, 550, 547, 1M cool down
3 days in Texas
8 runs, 0 days off
2 lift sessions
Two weeks ago, I was panicking that Boston was in less than 5 weeks. Now, as I write this, Boston is just 15 days away, and I feel ready. Not as ready as I had planned for, but as ready as I can be given the hiccups experienced earlier in February. The few data points that I have to gauge my fitness level indicate that I’m fit enough to be able to finish a decent marathon. This week was especially a huge confidence boost, mostly because I did a hard midweek workout before flying to Dallas for a jampacked work trip. I even found the motivation to complete a 90 minute medium long run by myself in Plano!
The 2.5M repeats on Tuesday were tough as hell. My legs felt fatigued from the 24 miler on Saturday and my ability to pick up the pace faster than 540 seemed very limited. Ideally, I would have taken an extra rest day and completed the workout on Wednesday, but I didn’t want to even attempt this workout in Plano because I know I just wouldn’t have done it. So, Jay and I met up and did 3 loops of the service road Google Loop. Jay pulled me along, as this was just one of those day’s where it was a struggle to put one foot in front of the other. I needed Jay’s company to just keep my head in the game and to prevent me from stopping on the side of the road. After that, I packed up and boarded a flight to Texas.
After having a lot of fun with my BOA Team Erica co-workers, I landed back in SJC on Friday night, excited to be home. I spent Saturday coordinating to get everyone together to do our final big long run before Boston. The plan was to meet Sunday at 8AM at Baylands with Shal, Rachel, Max, Imran, Dale and Tom and to grab bottles from the hood of my car to practice race day fueling. After 6 miles, Rachel and I took off to complete our tempo, and it felt so relaxed for me. Of course it felt relaxed in the beginning, and Rachel asked if I wanted to relax the pace a little, but every time that I thought I “relaxed” the pace, we ran the same: sub-6:00. So, I decided to take a risk and trust that I’d be able to maintain the effort towards the final miles. At mile 5, Rachel and I both grabbed our bottles of Maurten and I took some chews at mile 5 and 9. After we hit the 11 mile split, I knew that we were in the clear to run faster if we’d like, so Rachel and I both naturally picked up the pace. It felt a bit more labored towards the end, but not like I was running half marathon pace. It just felt natural. It was so great to have Rachel’s company for this run. I didn’t want to slow her down and we just felt so even together that it made the run feel not just comfortable, but also enjoyable! Everyone came away with pretty great runs so there was a certain buzz in the parking lot after we finished and posed for our picture.
So, yeah, after this week, the data is telling me that I am pretty fit and that I can run strong at Boston. It’s okay to take a different road than I normally would leading into a marathon and I just have to trust that it was the right route!
The entire Boston Marathon crew post Baylands long run!