Dress Rehearsal

Didn’t get to blog this weekend. So I'll start here by giving a quick recap.

On Saturday I went out mid morning and ran the Strawberry Mansion Bridge loop. In contrast to how I felt after Friday’s run, I ran surprisingly strong. Still warm and muggy; 11 in 87:37. Sunday was a DNR, as I traveled to my mom’s in New York and the urge to run did not overpower the logistical barriers to doing so. Yesterday I ran about 6.5 miles (53:35) up at my mom’s, doing a loop up around North Rockland High School on some very old running routes. Had about an hour to squeeze in between getting up and then getting ready to go to NYC for the day.

This morning I got up a few minutes earlier so that I could run the BN loop. I wanted to run it in under 100 minutes and get back before 7:30. My apartment was warmer than it was outside, where it was pleasantly cool at 5:45 am. Going down toward Center City, familiar faces passed the other way. When I got to MLK I decided to set some very modest time goals, mainly as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming tempo runs. Hit the four MLK miles in 27:51 (goal 28 min), then proceeded to make it to the BN summit in 10:04 en route to Belmont Plateau in 20:04. I’ll take it, as the idea was to push myself a bit mentally. Its still too early to beat myself up physically. It was really difficult to get started, the first mile was very creaky. I think part of it is I gotta get more sleep on the nights before I do these runs.

I also got that feeling of relentlessness this morning. This describes, when I am building up mileage, that feeling where what you did yesterday don’t mean shit because you once again have boocoo miles staring you in the face. Day in and day out.

Its starting to feel like I’m training for a marathon. 13.5 miles in 1:42:03. Got back at 7:34.