An entire summer of training and racing, summarized in one post!

Whew! Where have I been? Well...training, racing, and running a LOT. When we last left off, I had just run the Mount Washington Road Race and was getting ready to ramp up for fall marathon training. Turns out, fall marathon training (along with various other life things) is time consuming, and hasn't left a lot of time for blogging! I've meant to pop open this blog from time to time but it's always gotten away from me. So here I am, 3 weeks out from my fall marathon, and I guess I'll sum things up month by month until we get to the present.

July
Nothing really happened in July. I didn't race at all. I gradually started easing back into some longer runs and things that resembled workouts (often failing at the latter). It is kind of funny to look back at July, because in particular I recall doing a 2 x 1.5 mile tempo run at like...6:50 pace. Which right now doesn't actually sound very hard, or all that fast. But at the time it was IMPOSSIBLE. Other July events included hiking a couple more 4000 footers on the 4th of July, MOVING (back in with my then boyfriend, now fiance! See August...hah) and some really hot weather.

August
Running started to intensify quite a bit! I really didn't race much at all this summer, but did wind up jumping in a random 5K the weekend of the 12th because I was supposed to be in WI for a wedding, but my flight got cancelled and I didn't get to go, so I decided to do a 5K instead. I don't know, logical? The 5K was held at 11 am in the middle of August, and I think that's pretty much all that needs to be said about that. It was 85, I literally ran my goal marathon pace for the 3rd mile, and the course was a quarter mile long. Fun times had by all..including Andrew, who volunteered as tribute to also run the race to make me feel better about my cancelled flight. What a guy! There was BBQ and Aeronaut beer afterwards though, so that was cool.

Another running related thing that happened in August was for the first time in my ENTIRE LIFE, I began running in the morning before work about once a week. I cannot even emphasize what a big deal this is for me: I have always dreamed of being a morning runner but for 10 years have never been able to make it happen. But you know what they say about habits...once I had been going for about 3 weeks, it became pretty normal and easy to just roll out of bed, sleepwalk through 5 miles, and save myself all sorts of time later in the day. It was a great accomplishment for the summer, and was definitely useful in upping my mileage as was my plan for this training cycle.

Slightly more important and exciting than morning running was the fact that Andrew and I got engaged on August 21! In the interest of full disclosure, we had planned that weekend for about a month and honestly I'm not sure how I kept myself under control in the first 3 weeks of August. We hiked Mount Jefferson in what turned out to be a foggy, windy, cold day, but loved every second and got engaged on our way down the mountain. We then spent the night at the super swanky Mount Washington hotel which was an absolute blast as it's not the sort of thing we would typically EVER do. So I've now added wedding planning to my list of outside of work activities! I don't hate it. ;)

September
September has been QUITE the month. Back in maybe July I sat down and made a spreadsheet of my planned training schedule for Baystate with anticipated daily runs, races, and mileage goal numbers. I patted myself on the back for these high, high numbers I was supposedly going to be running, and then I sat back and looked at it and thought "oh god, you didn't give yourself ANY days off. Well there's no way THAT'S going to happen". Well, imagine my pride, excitement, and surprise when I actually managed to stick EXACTLY to my plan for September - a plan that included taking a grand total of ONE day off (during which I hiked 12 miles in the White Mountains, so not exactly a rest day). I hit 70+ mile weeks for the last 2 weeks of the month, only the first and second time I've ever done that. And I'll tell you...it's been a lot of work, and frequently I've contemplated how I feel like all I do is go to work and run, but I'll be damned if I don't feel some power from it. Back at the beginning of September I ran like a 61 mile week and I remember thinking "ugh my legs are SO tired" at the end of it. This week I ran 73 miles, and honestly, my legs don't feel all that bad. It's like they've just become numb to the workload and are just sort of like "meh. Well. OK. I guess this is what we do now".  I finished the month with nearly 300 miles, a huge PR for me. I think that really sums up this training cycle - I'm putting in the work and actually really enjoying it, even if it doesn't seem to be showing up in my race performances yet. I've also not been feeling injured at all despite the increased mileage, so I guess that shows I'm being smart as well!

Aside from the higher mileage load this month I've also been doing a pretty decent workout load which has included the most running at goal marathon pace I've ever done in the cycle. I also raced 3 times (twice really with the goal of truly racing, and once as a tempo) and am just this marathon away from completing the USATF-NE Grand Prix series, which I for some reason set out to complete this year. I suppose I'll briefly recap these races for the sake of this blog, and looking back on this someday and being like "so, why exactly did you race 3 weekends in a row again?"

Surftown Half (9/10) - The experience of this race was actually pretty fun, but definitely a classic rust buster in that I didn't run well at ALL. I suppose when you don't race from April to September, this is to be expected. The weather was medicore; a little sunny and quite humid, but relatively cool (in the 60s), nothing I'd really complain about in early September. I started off the first 2 or 3 miles running right around 7:00 pace, and feeling really good. The good feeling lasted about 20 minutes - we then headed into a mildly hilly section of the course and I immediately could tell that bad things were around the bend. I settled back in around 7:10, trying to use effort as my guide - I figured on tired legs (this was the aforementioned first 60 mile week) I wasn't going to PR anyway, but wanted to put in a good effort. This went OK until mile 7 or 8, at which point I started to feel really shitty. I'm convinced I straight up fell asleep during mile 8 because my watch buzzed a 7:42 and all of a sudden I was like shit! You can't be doing that! I was able to pick it up a bit and ended up running 3 or 4 miles at right around goal marathon pace which is fine I guess, not bad as a training stimulus, but I was just completely not in the mood. Thankfully there were two women near me, one in purple and one in gray, who I had been leapfrogging around with, and they were basically the only thing that kept me engaged in the race. I was able to lose them both, hilariously, on the one major hill on the course, a very short but VERY steep incline. I then picked it up back to like 7:08 for the last mile and wound up finishing in 1:35:3x - an acceptable time, but nothing to write home about. The half marathon is a tough distance for me - I think I often panic at how hard a certain pace feels early and can't convince myself that it's sustainable for a whole 13.1 miles, so I back off (probably too much) and then figure out I have something still in the tank the last couple of miles. I doubt it's a very effective pacing strategy and it's something I hope to work on when I actually aim to set a half marathon as my goal race sometime soon. The remainder of the day after the race, however, was EXCELLENT. We drank silly cocktails out of ceramic glasses which we got to keep, sat in giant beach chairs, and went to a brewery. It was fantastic.

Providence CVS Downtown 5K (9/17) - The following weekend, I raced a 5K which I planned to race all out. And I DID race it all out, but was hoping for a slightly better result. This was a Grand Prix race, so definitely good competition, and it's definitely a good course to go fast on, but the weather was atrocious! The humidity was 100% in the morning but at least it was overcast...of course then maybe 15 minutes before the race the clouds parted, the blazing sun came out, and we were hit with temperatures in the 70s with 95% humidity. Yikes. I also ran the first mile of this race in 6:05...OH DEAR. It is definitely a downhill mile but still...there's no need for that. The second mile I ran 6:38 and that was OK, 3rd mile the heat and humidity were really just getting to me and my calf was cramping up (probably because I wore racing flats for the first time in months and months). My official time was 20:32, still one of my better (second best, I think) road 5Ks I've ever run. Based on my own GPS and other people's Stravas, the course may be a touch long, so I definitely felt good about my fitness after this race. I'll get that damn sub 20 someday! I was also supposed to do a 10 mile cooldown after this (lol) - thankfully my ride wanted to get back to Boston, so I only did 5 and then doubled it up later in the day. You can file that under "things I never thought I'd do".

Lone Gull 10K (9/24) - Because this was the 3rd weekend I'd be racing, I decided in advance that I'd be tempoing this 10K because I had to do it as part of the Grand Prix. I was very, very happy with that decision when we were gifted with an even hotter, still sunny, and just as humid day! I did a long warmup (6 miles) and felt like I had sweated out everything in my body...and then I had to go run the race! Finished with an average of 7:15 pace which is a little fast for GMP, but I think I did a good job of reining it in and not letting myself really go all out. It was kind of nice to be able to be like...uggh so hot...hey guess what you can slow down! Perks of the race-as-workout situation, I guess. The course was really lovely though - beautiful ocean views and just some mild rollers, I'd love to come back and do it again and actually race it.

So that basically brings us up to date with what I've been doing running wise. I'm sure I'll have to come back here and ramble a bit before the marathon, because I've definitely got some mental games going on that I'm trying to get past and probably just need to spew out on a page to help with that, haha. No matter what, I'm really happy with this training cycle and the work I've been putting in...just really, really hoping it can pay off come October 22!