20 days to go!

Wow, it has been almost a month since I have blogged!  Sorry about the long hiatus, but my life has been pretty busy lately.  I finished working in Summersville about 2 weeks ago.  Thank goodness that is over!  No more driving 90 minutes every Monday, staying in a hotel for 2 nights, and driving back home Wednesday night.  I mean, it was nice just working 3 twelve hour shifts per week, but I'm not going to say it was easy to leave my husband and pets every week.  So, I'm back home now and very happy to never have to go back there again!

I'm finishing up my 8th week of training for the Charleston Distance Run.  Things have been going very well!  My ankle and achilles are pretty much all healed up.  I run 4-5 days per week on it, and the only time it reminds me it's there is the day after a long run.  It gets a little bit stiff after the long run, but I just stretch it out and it's good to go.  I did an hour and 40 minute run last Sunday, and I'm bumping it up to 1 hour 50 minutes this Sunday.  I have really been enjoying my long runs.  I have a great downtown route I run that includes part of the CDR course.  Last year, I tried to keep my pace 11:30-12:00 min/mile because I was going off of heart rate.  This year, I ditched the HR monitor and I just run how I feel, so my long runs are faster.  Last week I ran a little over 9 miles at a 10:50-ish pace.  This Sunday will be my first 10 miler in a really long time.  It's pouring the rain now, and is supposed to rain in the morning, so I should have a nice rainy 10 miler.

I ran the CDR hills for the first time in almost a year on Thursday.  I forgot what a beast Capital Punishment is.  It's almost 1 mile at a 5% grade.  I had to walk twice up that, then a couple more times on a couple other hills.  I got a tummy cramp under my rib at the downhill.  I finished the 5.5 miles in 60 minutes.  I was pretty satisfied with the run.  I'm going to run the hills two more times before the race, which is only 20 days away!!  I'm barely going to have enough miles built up for my long run to even think about running this race, but I have to run it!  It may actually be the last year of this race :(  They keep talking about turning it into a flat half marathon to draw more people.  There's actually an article about the race in the most recent article of Runner's World.  It's towards the back and talks about how the race is in danger of being in its last year.  It's quite sad to read.  When we heard RW was doing an article about the CDR, us locals got really excited.  I thought they were going to talk about the history of the race and talk it up to try to get people interested in running it, but instead it just talked about how it's almost dead.

Anways, it's been so freaking humid and hot here, my runs have been hit or miss.  I have been doing my runs early in the morning between 6-7AM to beat the heat.  The heat index has actually reached 105 degrees a couple of times.  Some days, the morning weather is good and I have a great run, and other days the air is just so heavy and humid, I can barely run.  I'm hoping to have two weeks of really good training in before the race.  If the weather cooperates, I should be fine.  I just hope that raceday the weather isn't too bad.  Last year, it was just the perfect temperature, and I had a great race.  They start the race early at 7:30, but with this weather, they should start it at 7!  I'm not sure what my goal is, or even if I have a goal time.  With the limited time I will have had to train (10 weeks v. 16 weeks last year), I may be just happy to finish.  I have told myself that I'm going to take it easy on the hills, and take a few walk breaks, so I don't wear myself out.  I may just shoot for a 10:00 min/mile pace again and see how I feel.  Last year I finished in 2:28.  We will see how things go, though.  My training has been very different this year, so I may just surprise myself.

Oh, I ran a 5k last Saturday.  I finished in 27:37, which was a huge surprise to me!  I planned on running it as a tempo run at about a 9:15 pace, but the weather was so cool at about 65 degrees, I pushed harder.  I tried to keep it under a 9:00 min./mile pace, and I succeeded.  It was a flat 5k just minutes from my house.  I was very pleased with the results.  Considering I haven't done any speedwork or hill training, I'm very happy with that!

This week's training plan:
Monday:  off
Tuesday:  80 min medium effort run
Wednesday:  CDR hills
Thursday:  80 min medium effort run
Friday:  60 min rolling hills
Saturday:  off
Sunday:  2 hour long run