I came out of race retirement!

After 6 long, race-less, months...I finally raced again!  I can't call it a glorious comeback, but it was a comeback, and I will take it!  And it was a last minute decision, so it's not like I was trying to train for it and failed in my training.  It was a good way for me to find out where I stand race-training-wise, and should help me as I look ahead to my next races.  Race report can be found here.

This week : 

M : sweatfest 1:01:04 / 14.5 miles

T : sweatfest 1:00:07 / 15.7 miles

W : run 11  / 1:25:55 (7:48) / 791 ft

F : run 6.2 / 47:48 (7:42) / 476 ft

Sa : warm-up : 2.3 / 17:10 (7:26) / 52 ft

race : 10 / 1:12:19 (7:13) / 397 ft

cool-down : 0.7 /7:04 (10:05) / 0 ft

total bike : 30.2 miles

total run : 30.2 miles

Monday it snowed all morning and rained all afternoon.  There was no school and the roads were way too gross for me to seriously consider running.  So I decided it was time to use that bike trainer that is sitting in the corner of my living room.  I was sitting around reading a book and realized that I may as well be sitting on a bike reading a book.  

Tuesday the roads were still fairly messy.  They were passable for cars, but my best bet for a running surface was the middle of the road and there was enough traffic to make that less than ideal, so I rode the sweatfest again.  I was nearing the end of a book, so I decided I wasn't allowed to look at the garmin until I finished the book.  The book got me 47 minutes, then I switched to a video on amazon prime to get myself to the end of the hour. 

Wednesday I was very happy to be exercising outside again, so I had a nice long run.  

Thursday I stayed at work past 3:30 because I was being productive and wanted to get as much done as possible.  Minutes later, I was hit with intense exhaustion.  I went home and tried unsuccessfully to talk myself into going for a jog. 

Friday I decided I was running a 10 mile race on Saturday.  All my legs knew was that they had Thursday off and needed a run.  I tried not to run too hard since I knew I was racing the next day.  I also had in the back of my mind that I had just upped my minimum weekly mileage requirement to 30, and that I wanted to be able to take Sunday off after the race, so throughout the whole run I was thinking about how long Saturday's warm-up and cool-down would need to be depending on how far I ran Friday. 

Saturday, I decided my warm-up had to be at least 2 miles, and the further it was, the less I would have to torture myself with a cool-down.  I'm glad I made my warm-up as long as I did, because the cool-down I ended up doing was extremely hard to get myself through. It has very rarely ever been so hard to put one foot in front of the other as it was in that cool-down!  I won't recap the race here, because it has already been recapped in another post.