Weekend Roundup

Finally, the last week of holiday parties getting in the way of training is over.  This week's festivitity was obviously New Years.  A bunch of my coworkers rented out a private room in Old Town Alexandria, so we had a private party for ourselves and friends/family.  It was definately one of my best New Years memories.  No annoying jacka$$es in crowded bars, no long lines to get a drink, our own dj, bartender, and most importantly, bathroom.  Oh yea, and it was also cheap.  It worked out perfectly.  Rebecca, myself, and a bunch of our friends took a cab both ways, so we didn't have to worry about driving.  The only negative was that I did a little bit of drinking.  Turns out, when you have a lot of friends around, all celebrating and festive, and a private bar, it makes it easy to order drinks.  Those long lines in crowded bars that I was glad not to have more than likely would have kept people from drinking too much too quickly.  Well needless to say ,I did a lot of celebrating.  I felt moderately ok the day after, but the plan of running some hills was clearly thrown out the window.  There would be no running.  No biggie though, it wasn't like I missed a key workout.  

Speaking of workouts, here is how this week's runs went:

- Monday: 4 miles easy.  Felt good and loose, after Saturday's long run

- Tuesday: 7 mile tempo run.  Ended up averaging 7:34/mile pace.  I was pretty happy with that, since my first mile was a warm up, before pushing the pace.

- Wednesday: 4 miles easy.  Another easy run.  This was my first treadmill run of the season.  I HATE the treadmill, even though I was on one with a personal tv.  It is still boring and will never be fun.  Only reason I resorted to it was because of what was going on outside that day.  Just running the 1/4 mile to the gym was one of the worst experiences of running in my life.  I didn't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary outside in that weather.  I also did some light weights for my legs.  I need to keep this up on a weekly basis to make sure my leg muscles are all strong and stable, since running is so hamstring dependent.

- Thursday: No run due to slight hangover from New Years.

- Saturday: 15 miles.  Since my body was feeling good after last week's long run and the training so far this week, I opted for progression, rather than a step back week.  I started the run right on my plan and cruised the first 8 or so miles, averaging around 8:30 or so pace.  Then, the group I was running with broke off to a different way to run a shorter course, and I was left to run Haines Point and the remaining 2 miles all to myself.  This amounted to the remaining 7 miles by myself.  Normally, this is not an issue, but I've decided that running Haines Point late in a run is the equivilent of determining whether you have the will to succeed or to fail.  It is so lonely, boring, and mind numingly flat that the only thoughts that ran through my head were the math games of how much longer I'd have to run till I got back to an enjoyable section of the course.  So, I did what any sane person would do in this situation: I sped up!  My mindset was that the only way to be done with this sooner was to run it faster.  And that is exactly what I did.  Once done with Haines Point, I cruised back to my starting point on Gravelly Point to finish the run with an average of about 8:15/mile.  I didn't mean to average that pace, as I'd like to stay injury free and not unnecessarily punish my body by running harder than I need to on my long runs, unlike last year, but I had no other choice.  As I sit here today and from walking around yesterday afternoon, I have some residual soreness on the outside of my right foot, possibly from the tightness or lack thereof on my shoe, but my legs feel fine, so that's a pretty good sign that I didn't push too hard.

This week is recovery week.  I still have some tough workouts planned, including more speedwork, but the long run steps back to 12 this week.