This was a very interesting weekend. I pretty much spent all of last week playing catch up from all the Super Bowl festivities, and managed to get back into the swing of things. My running hasn't taken that far of a back seat as I had thought, although I was pretty darned sore after the Thursday workout from mamma Michelle that I posted about the other day. Saturdays workout was a 5K time trial. If you remember, I started off the new year right with a new 5K personal best of 21:57. My first 21 anything at that distance. But with the playoffs and Super Bowl really getting in the way of my running, I hadn't been putting in the same kind of miles over the previous 3 weeks. I was very interested in seeing how far I had fallen off the 5K time. My weight had stayed almost steady until I got back from Orlando. When I hopped ont he scales, I had noticed that I had gained a few pounds, I guess not totally unexpected since we were eating out, and that's just plain a simple a recipe for disaster. And not too bad since it was only 3 pounds....That increased to 5 as I re-hydrated throughout the week, but that was just water so I wasn't totally worried that I'd fallen off the wagon. We had a pretty good sized group, about 25 in all. We toed the line and took off. I actually felt really relaxed through the first mile at a 6:46. My goal was to hang with Butch as long as I could, and I did that pretty well. My second mile was a little slower, but half of it included the turnaround and uphill back stretch, and I came in at a 7:20. I wasn't real excited with that, but it was still better then the 7:40ish I had run on New Years day for mile two. This is where it gets kinda sketchy. There's a little dip that include a pretty steep climb out....This is where I lost it...I lost the rhythm in my breathing and really struggled. Even though I had passed one of the runners who was in front of me...I just felt labored, and really started feeling the lactic acid that was still there from Thursday run. I made a quick recovery plan where I slowed down, and managed to get my breathing back in order. from there it was just get back to the start in one piece and see how close you are to the PB. I figured that since I had some slack in the first two miles, I could get pretty close and possibly beat it if I just held on, and really hammered the last tenth. So that's what i did, I got back in a good rythm, but I missed where I wanted to start picking up the pace. I missed the mark on the road, and started my kick about 7-10 seconds too late. I came in with a time of 22:03, only 6 seconds slower then what I ran on New Years, but it wasn't a smooth effort by any stretch of the imagination. That's what I've really got to work on over the next few weeks of building miles back on my legs.
Sunday was interrupted by rain showers and the phone call that nobody wants to get. Just after I had gotten out of the shower from running on the treadmill (which I despise by the way), my sister calls me from Denver. She says that she got a frantic call from mom, and my father was rushed to the ER and was having a possible heart attack. So, in a frenzy, I get the kids all bundled up, and get them to mom and I rush up to PHX. By the time I got there, things had settled down a bit, and they were beginning to think it wasn't his ticker after all....WHEW! Turns out, he was having issues with his stomach as a result of all the chemotherapy treatments, and it felt a LOT like a heart attack. After 6 hours of observations and a couple of lab works to confirm, they sent him home....and I made the trek back to Tucson. Sheesh...We were just in Orlando a week ago. Thankfully that didn't happen there. WHEW!
So, back to running.....Today was a great start to that. we had our 12x300m hill repeats with a jog back to the bottom of the hill. Today was unusually cold, as we had a winter storm roll through that dropped snow on the Tucson valley floor. Really cool to look at, since we don't get that very often, let alone in February. When we ran this workout 2 weeks ago, my target times were in the 1:25 range, but I managed to run them all at around 1:18. Today my legs felt incredibly fresh. I beat my time from two weeks ago, and ran every single one of the efforts in 1:16 or 1:17. It was INCREDIBLY consistent. So, I think my legs are getting back to the grind quite nicely, as I figured it would take a couple of weeks to get them going.
Tomorrows I'm going to do the 5 mile loop, and then Thursday is a 4 mile effort of 30 second repeats between fast and not as fast. Until then.....train Hard and LIVE STRONG.
