Marathon Eve

Workout:
Yesterday: Rest day
Today: 2.1 miles easy

Tomorrow I will be running my 5th marathon, the Miracle Match Marathon in Waco, TX.  It seems like the taper weeks just flew by and I'm hoping I am as prepared as possible.  Unfortunately, I have had a few obstacles working against that preparation.  For starters, I spent 9 days of this month (the first part of my taper) on a family ski vacation in New Mexico.  The vacation was a lot of fun, but it made it difficult to get mileage and intensity in, both of which I would have liked for the beginning of the taper.  Then, once I returned to Austin, I was thrown back into what is turning out to be a hectic semester of work.  This week in particular, being the final week of my taper, I have been striving to be relaxed, calm, rested and hydrated.  Circumstances at work have been doing everything possible to thwart this.  First, it has been hard to finish up anywhere near an 8 hr day.  While I am at work, I am almost never sitting, instead I'm doing bench work standing up or walking back and forth to different labs.  I've had deadlines, which doesn't help the "calm" and finally I cannot drink water while physically in the lab, which has made hydration a challenge.

But that is all behind me because today is Saturday and I slept in this morning and I am feeling well rested and happy.  I ran an easy 2 miles this morning and got a good stretch in.  Right now, I am eating some oatmeal and blackberries for breakfast and I'm feeling good.  In the early afternoon, boyfriend and I will make the relatively easy drive north to Waco, stop by the expo for my stuff and check into the hotel.  I booked a hotel room literally a block from the starting line, so I'm expecting an easy morning tomorrow.  While the weather forecast isn't ideal, it's looking pretty good...57 to 64 F but high humidity (starting at 96% and dropping to 70%).  I would have liked a race 10 degrees cooler, but you can't control everything.

So here we go, marathon number 5!  Tomorrow I'll be taking off the watch, running by feel, and seeing what I can do.  This is a hilly course, so I'm not focusing on a time, but rather feeling good and controlled in the race.  Best of luck to everyone running Houston tomorrow, as well as any other races!

An Albuquerque Run

Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque, NM

This past week, I hit my peak mileage goal (well, 1 mile short) with 59 total miles over 6 days of running.  Now, 3 weeks out from the Miracle Match Marathon, I have started my taper.  This perfectly coincides with a 9 day trip to New Mexico.  I flew from Austin to Albuquerque yesterday, and took a much needed day off from running.  In the previous two days, I had run a 7.8 mile hilly tempo run with a sub-8 minute mile pace, followed by a more relaxed, but still hilly 9.1 mile run at a sub-8:30 minute mile pace.

Channel Trail, Albuquerque, NM

So now that I am tapering and on vacation, I decided to start off this morning with a relaxed but enjoyable run.  Fortunately, I woke up to a perfectly clear, blue sky and bright sunshine.  While it was cold here (high 20s), the sunshine made up for it.  Nonetheless, it was an adjustment coming from Austin.  I had to put on running tights and a running hat for the first time in about a year.  I skipped the gloves though.  The hotel was located right along a bike trail called the Channel Trail, which runs for miles along a steep, concrete drainage channel.  The bike trail runs alongside some busy roads, but is completely separate from the traffic, which makes it ideal for an uninterrupted run.  Also, because it just keeps going for miles, it makes it really easy to head out for a run without getting lost.  The scenery wasn't great, but running in a new place is always interesting enough (the first time around) so I didn't mind.  I simply ran for an hour, 30 minutes out and then turned around.  My splits were perfectly even and I ended up covering 7 miles, just what I was hoping for.  My legs were still feeling pretty tired from previous workouts, and I felt a little winded, which I attributed to the high elevation of 5300 ft (for reference, Austin has an average elevation of 576 ft).  While I didn't feel like I could bust out a fast track session this morning, I did feel fit and had no problem holding an 8:30 pace.

Today we move North to Santa Fe and tomorrow will be a ski day.  I may not run tomorrow, but if I'm feeling good I might get a short run in.  I'll be skiing 4 of the days on the trip, so I intend to run at least the other 5 days, maybe more.