Day 106 (October 12): 5.1 miles easy, outdoors. Overall this was a pretty nice run, though I did get increasingly hot as the run went on because of the abundant sunshine. I'm really hoping for cool weather for the marathon because I'm not a very good warm weather runner.
Day 107 (October 13): 20 miles at once is hard! After getting hubby off to work I headed to Central Park. I ran up to the boathouse, where I met with Jess. I ran with Jess from mile 0.8 to about 5 miles into the run. While running with Jess I took a couple of stretch breaks because Jess is just getting back into running after a summer of laziness. I think that she needed the break. She was beating me in races all spring, but I guess a couple months off of training took its toll :P
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| Jess and I at the boathouse. Note my nerd style glasses -- getting a LASIK consult on Thursday and can't wear contacts. |
I ran another small loop of the park before heading to the south east corner of the park to meet Mish. From about miles 8-12 of my run I ran with her. She runs central park very often on her lunch breaks to balance being a mom with marathon training. It was a short run for her, just 4 miles, but she had run a half on Sunday and was doing it at recovery pace. We ran two of the lower loops of the park together. It was really enjoyable to run with her because during long runs I think that a distraction is helpful.
After Mish went back to work, I was all alone (with the hundreds of other runners in central park of course). I probably took too many rest breaks in which I paused my watched and stretched out various body parts and ate shot bloks but I really just wanted to not pressure myself during this run. The route was just silliness, but that's okay. The good thing about central park is there are lots of different routes to run. At around mile 17 I was passed by an entire all boys high school gym class. Normally I would have tried to race them a bit, but I figured that it really wasn't worth it.
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| Right around where the high school boys passed me. |
Did this contribute meaningfully to my marathon training? I don't know... let's see how I'm feeling in a few days. I certainly learned that I need to be more thorough in my use of body glide. It was a bit warm and humid and I've got the chafing to prove it.
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| Boom! 20 miles done! |
Day 108 (October 14): Rest day is the best day! I figured I should give my legs a break after the 20 mile long run, because long runs are hard.
Day 109 (October 15): I did something a little bit silly on Thursday. I went for a LASIK consultation which involed getting my eyes dilated. That made seeing things a bit tough for the rest of the day. I grabbed lunch with Jess and walked around for a bit. When I got home I cleaned the apartment a bunch and then did 3 miles on the treadmill. I didn't want to run outside with my eyes still dilated. The result of the LASIK consult is that I am a good candidate for LASIK and the doctor says I'll be able to run the day after surgery. Because of this, I'll be getting LASIK on Tuesday the 20th. Yes, I am a bit impulsive...
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| Fuel? Post LASIK consult lunch. |
Day 110 (October 16): I am trying to get Jess back into running, so I convinced her to come to LIC to run with me :-) She came over in the afternoon and I said I wanted to do 4-5 miles, she said "how about 3?" =P So I took her on a route where she could rest for a bit halfway while I ran a bit extra. She will get back into running. I'll have more ability to drag her out once marathon training is done. I wound up with 4.1 miles, I think she wound up with 3 miles.
Day 111 (October 17): 5.1 miles easy outside. I had to get this run done relatively early because my in-laws were coming in for a family birthday lunch. Yay for listening to lots of people speaking rapid fire mandarin. I still haven't let my in-laws know that I'm learning Chinese so they didn't really expect me to speak at all, which was nice.
Day 112 (October 18): On Sunday I did my last long run of marathon training. Through Runners United I met a girl (Tas) who is also training for the marathon. She told me about a group run hosted by the hellgate club which was open for people to join. It was a really chilly morning. I put on tights, a tshirt, a light jacket, and gloves. I also put on my flip belt in case I decided to tie my jacket around my waist. I'd much rather have my phone in my flip belt that bouncing back and forth in my jacket. I facebook chatted with Tas in the morning she seemed to want to skip the run because of the cold weather. I eventually convinced her to come.
However, Tas arrived 15 minutes past the starting time. I waited for her and tried to convince the bag check van to wait for her but they had to set up the water station. She was upset that the van had left, but honestly runners tend to be pretty punctual people so the van didn't budget any extra time for stragglers. That left her running with her backpack on. While I felt bad for her, if she knew she was running late she should have hopped in a cab or left the bag at home. It was still fun running with her. She is relatively new to running, but has run something like 6 full marathons since her first a year ago. I don't think that this serial marathoning bug will hit me. We ran over the Queensboro bridge and up 1st avenue. We missed the water stop because they had broken it down by the time we got there, which was perhaps to be expected because (a) I'm a slower runner and (b) I left over 15 minutes after the main group. It was okay though because there are water fountains at most parks in the city.
At some point we met up with friends of Tas. She lagged behind with her running coach friend while I ran with Katerina. Katerina is someone I'd never met before, but she is an inner city school guidance counselor so we immediately bonded over teacher stuff. It made the miles go by much faster to have someone to talk to about random life topics :-) We got a little lost in the Bronx but made it back to fifth avenue eventually. I don't think that I have to worry about getting lost during the marathon itself =P
Once back in Manhattan we buckled down. I stopped at a water fountain to refill my bottle and we kept on trucking. When we got to the park it was a sign that we were almost done. Of course the perimeter of central park is lined with cobble stones, so we decided to run in the bus lane instead. With headphones out and high visibility clothing on, I wasn't too worried. We ran into the other two girls again, who were now ahead of us because of our little Bronx detour.
Getting into the park itself was interesting. There was some sort of breast cancer walk going on and it was just terrible. There were barricades setup but the walkers didn't care and spread the entire width of the road. Weaving around them was a bit infuriating. Katerina hadn't studied the marathon route and wanted to continue on the main loop, but I remembered that the marathon route and thought we needed to keep heading south. She convinced me I was wrong (I wasn't) so we headed back again where we met with the other two girls again. We eventually made it to the south edge of the park and ran. We didn't run all the way to the finish because we were both above our planned mileage for the day. We hopped on the subway back to Queens and that was the end of my last long run =D Overall I ran 13.2 miles on this run.
Week 16 Summary:
Miles: 50.5
Pace: 11:42 min/mile
Stayed on Plan: Nope, not at all. I was way above planned mileage because I pushed my long run back by two days.
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