Whoa, we're (a lot more than) halfway there!

One more week to go before taper, hell yes! Has it really been 3 months since I signed up for this ridiculous thing? Did I really set a huge weekly mileage PR and am on my way to a huge monthly mileage PR? Do I really only have to do ONE MORE god-forsaken long run before the real thing? The answer, thankfully [I think?] is YES.

Really, training for this marathon at this point in my life was one of the smartest things I could have done. As I'm randomly throwing myself around this new city hoping that a job will come my way while I bide my time before this whole 'grad school' business starts in May, running, and more specifically, having this insane 26.2 distance to shoot for, has given me a focus and kept me sane. While I really have no clue what's going on in the rest of my life, I know how many miles I'll be running on Sunday. Running has given me a reason to step out my door and explore the city as opposed to wallowing in self pity at the fact that no one has picked up my glorious resume and decided I was ideal for whatever position they were hiring for. It's like that Nike quote: there are schools you can't get into, neighborhoods you can't live in, clubs you can't be a part of...but the roads are always open. And as I basically picked up the life I've known for the past 4 years and turned it upside down, running has been the one thing that has been the center. The people and places I'm running with may have changed, but no matter where you are, 10 miles is 10 miles.

And so now here I am, standing on the edge of the end of this training cycle that more than anything else has been an exercise in me seeing what I could do. I didn't really follow a specific plan, other than "run more miles than usual during the week, and build your long run up to 20 or so". I had weeks that didn't go great, long runs that went horribly, days when I wondered what in the name of God was I doing trying to train for this stupid race. And yet, somehow, in one more week, the work will be done. I think I wrote a few weeks ago that I didn't feel like I got the whole mind blowing, "holy crap, I'm doing a MARATHON!" mindset, like in the moment I didn't feel like I was doing anything special. But as I approach the end of this journey, feeling in basically all ways the strongest I've felt in my life, I DO feel it. I can't even imagine how much I'm going to feel it when I cross the finish line of that marathon. Not only in my legs, but in my mind, and in my heart...I just feel strong, and badass, and proud of everything that I've done over the past few months.

[Apologies for the random ramblings/tangents...I tend to go off on them sometimes. It's why I have a blog, right? :)]

So one more week of hard training...one more week to get the miles in, harden up my legs and my mind for the task I'm putting onto them in 18 days. After this past week of training, I'm confident that one more week is really all I need to give myself that confidence that, come race day, I am going to kick some ass.
Monday: 22 miles [makeup for Sunday] [8:15 pace]
Tuesday: 10.2 miles total [warmup, cooldown, 4 x 1000 @ ~7:00 pace, strides]
Wednesday: 5.8 easy [7:48 pace]
Thursday: off [planned]
Friday: 10.8 progression [7:56 pace overall]
Saturday: off [unplanned...had a couple beers while watching the Badger game downtown and then came home and fell asleep...oops! I was sore anyway...we'll chalk it up to that ;)]
Sunday: 18.25 long [8:01 pace...I am SO happy about this run!]
Total miles: 66.8...mileage PR!! :)

So even though I slacked on Saturday, I wound up with a mileage PR which was pretty great. I guess having to do 2 long runs in a week will do that though...oops. Naughty naughty...oh well. I was really pleased with my 18 miler on Sunday. It was actually not supposed to be that long...I planned on a 2:20 run to step back a bit from Monday's epic event...so apparently I decided to run faster and make up for the lost time. WTF?! It was raining and like 60 which was pretty much perfect and I only stopped twice for bathroom breaks [random porta potties mysteriously placed along the Charles River definitely saved my life] and once for a gel. I was just amazed at how speedy my legs felt and I honestly wasn't surprised when I got back and saw that I ended up with around an 8 minute pace. Imagine if I could do THAT for the marathon...geez. But I'm definitely going to be more conservative than that since I don't feel like blowing up at 20 miles...but we'll save my pacing musings for another day.

One final thought: I got honked at SO many times while I was running Sunday...is it because it was raining? At one stoplight this guy seriously continuously kept honking at me and looking at me like I was insane. I was on the sidewalk, so it's not like I was in his way...so strange! And he was definitely not the only one...one car scared the crap out of me as I turned a corner onto a bridge (once again, on the sidewalk) and he just laid on his horn! I like to think of it as a compliment to my amazing blazing speed that people just honk because they're in awe. ;) But really, if you think my running's sexy, do you really think honking at me is going to make me stop, jump in your car, and drive away with you? If you're looking to impress me, get out of your car and run baby run! Haha, actually, I sort of doubt the majority of people doing the honking could keep up with me for more than a block. :) I'm totally used to it by now especially since during the summer I spend the majority of my time running in just a sports bra, but it still perplexes me and makes me laugh a little bit. Then again, I guess the majority of the population thinks that doing anything, let alone running, in a downpour is c-r-a-z-y, so they've got to express themselves somehow!

AND, I finally ordered my new shoes! RIP Etonics...you served me amazingly well, especially for $0.00 per mile. I think I'm going to take them out for one last victory lap tomorrow and then I should the the new Mizunos by Wednesday. Yippee! I always feel a little bittersweet about getting new shoes because of all the time and miles I've spent with those old worn out ones on my feet...but I guess when there is literally a hole in the bottom [I seriously should post a picture of that, haha] you know its time for a change!

Silly steeples

Tuesday is usually my day off, but it was so gorgeous today that I felt like I had to do something, so I decided I would try to get on the track and do some steeple practice since that's the next thing I'm racing. Buuut I totally forgot that the break I have between classes is right during the actual track team's practice so I couldn't get on the track (well, technically, we - and by we I mean anyone who isn't a member of the UW track team - can never get on the track anyway...but that's another story. It's easy enough to jump the fence.) So I ended up McGyvering a steeple workout that worked out surprisingly well! First I ran to the slanted situp boards on the parcourse thing and did some practice on the lowest one running up to it, not stuttering, jumping off and continuing to run - it was obviously quite a bit lower than the actual steeple but just kind of getting the general feeling in my legs. Then I got up on a higher board and practiced just jumping off - this one was closer to the actual distance from the top of the barrier to the bottom of the water pit, and my landing is my big problem so I was trying to land on one foot (which is hard!) I was planning on just running the rest of the way around the UBay fields back to the Nat, but all of a sudden something else caught my eye...there is a sort of fence set up around the edge of the field with posts every few meters. The posts come up about to my knee and they're situated on the side of a little hill...so if you were to jump off them, you would be jumping extra distance down the hill. See where I'm going with this? So yes, I got more than one awkward look as I ran across a street and jumped off a tiny post. And seriously - it was a GREAT approximation of steeple - at least what I remember it being like. A bit shorter than the real thing obviously, but still, the impact felt similar. I also realized while doing this that I think if I'm going to try to land on one foot, I'm going to have to take off my left (weaker, or at least not dominant) leg. When I take off my right, I can't land on my left without basically breaking an ankle but landing on my right is fine. I think that anything I lose from taking off of my non-dominant leg is going to be more than made up for if I can actually land on one foot and get my ass out of the pit, so this is a good thing to know!

So it was a fun time. I actually seriously considered trying a similar drill except actually into a flooded gulley thing, but I decided it wasn't worth the possibility of accidently killing myself on a random stick and turning my XC spikes into a muddier mess than they already are. I was laughing pretty much the whole time - seriously, I think I've completely accepted my running weirdness. Last night I had dance rehearsal after practice and I was walking around campus in my spandex shorts - and I thought to myself that only someone who's used to racing in almost nothing would just not give a crap about wearing that little in public. I mean hell, if fat coasties can wear long spandex, why shouldn't I show off my runners legs in short spandex? I mean, it was also 50 degrees and raining. But whatever...

Fun fun stuff. I'm really busy this week with my Optima dance show so I have been and will be dancing up a storm - which is quite a workout in and of itself. It's a good thing I'm a distance runner, because 8 dances basically back to back is kind of insanity...3-4 minutes of pretty much nonstop craziness. It's like 800 repeats! Lol...yeah...