Lotsa' Weekend Running

Hey guys, hope you had a great weekend…I spent mine doing what I love to do, running!

Saturday morning I laced up the shoes and hit the trails around town for my long run.  It was a cloudy, cool-ish morning, but there were plenty of runners out and about.   ran through the University, downtown and out to the park before making the turn back home.  I ended up finishing with some pretty decent hills and my legs were absolutely trashed by the end of the run.  I have been running A LOT lately (28 runs in the last 29 days) and I have been running pretty hard the past week as well, so there was plenty of accumulated fatigue in my legs for the long run.  This is the idea of doing hard runs in the days leading up to your long run so that you begin your long run already feeling a bit tired out, in an effort to simulate the later stages of the marathon itself.  Well, I didn't go out too hard and I was gassed about 5 miles into the run.  I ended up doing 16 miles, so I spent the last 11 miles pushing through on worn out legs…just like a marathon.  All in all, it was a good learning experience.  during the middle miles it always seems like my mind wants to mess with me…I get the ideas floating through my head about how tired and sore I am, how easy it would be to just cut a run short, etc…I'll tell ya, I really wanted to bail early, but I pushed on.  Even knowing that I was trying a slightly new route that ended with some pretty brutal climbs…the last couple miles had me climb over 100 feet…I decided to not cheat myself and just embrace the suck.  I got home and I was done…zombie mode the rest of the day.

The next day I had a 10K race scheduled, the Halloween Haunting.  I was solo for the race as Michelle and the kids went to church, so I didn't have any race paparazzi with me.  Of course being a Halloween race I had to break out my trusty Captain Thunderbolt costume…here's a glimpse of what I looked like, though this was from last year's race;

It was cold, but not quite as bad as last year, so I wore my Mickey mouse ears instead of a winter hat, but you get the idea.

I was running the 10K and my legs were still a bit wiped from the day before, but I had been running well lately and was still hoping to go under 40 minutes.  We took off and I was off like a shot.  I clocked a really quick first kilometre at 3:37 but knew that was too fast, so I settled down and ran right around a 3:50 pace (6:10/mile).  I stayed right at that pace for the quite a while and ran with another guy most of the first loop (the course was 2 loops of the 5K course).  We were either right on each other's shoulder or just in front of/ behind the other.  Right as we came through the start/finish for the first loop I managed to pass him for the last time and from that point on I was running solo.  I set it on cruise and just maintained my pace, crossing the finish line with a time of 38:47, good for 8th overall and an age group win.  Most importantly, I was the first place costume

After the race I stuck around to drink some coffee, eat some bananas and collect my prize (a nice new Mizuno running hat).  I also was able to meet one of the guys I follow on Strava…he happened to finish just ahead of me in 7th place.  I even walked away with a $20 credit at Runner's Choice as I won 3rd place in the costume contest!

Now I get to wind down the running a bit as we are packing up to leave for Disney in a few days…I can look back at a great month of training though and know I'm well on my way to a solid marathon in January.

Anyone else run a costume race this weekend?