Year 2, Week 10 Wrapup

I ate a crapload this week. Looking back at the reasons for that, I can pin it down to three factors: 1. It seems like there's a bit of a psychological thing going on where I felt deprived of my favorite things for so long, and I felt like I should be rewarded for doing the marathon. This kind of justified in my mind everything I was stuffing into my mouth. 2. We had a lot of candy and snacks left over from Christmas, and I don't like keeping a lot of stuff like that around the house. I determined the best way to remove that temptation was by eating it. All of it. 3. I was just plain hungry all week. Could be my body rebuilding after the marathon training. Or, it could be just that the trip to Vegas completely reset my body's perception of hungry and full. Either way, I felt pretty hungry.

The combination of ridiculous eating habits and only running 10 miles total means my moving average is up almost 2 pounds for the week. I'm sure that will settle back down next week, but it's alarming nonetheless.

I felt really good after the marathon, and was ready to run again by Tuesday. However, I had dinner really late that day, and had too much food in my stomach to really want to go out that night. So, Wednesday was my first day out running, and I did an easy three miles. Everything felt great, and I didn't feel sore or anything. Thursday, I did another 3 miles, with a couple of fast sections in the middle.

Great Expectations Academy Feeling Fit 5K

I had seen this race coming up on the schedule, and also heard from someone in my ward that they were probably going. I wasn't really considering going because it was only a week after the marathon. But, the more I looked at it, the more I wanted to go. It's a small race, but with age divisions every 5 years. Looking at the results from last year made me think I had a real shot of at least placing in my division or possibly even winning the division. The drawbacks were that it was a half hour away in the town where I grew up. So, there's a little drive, and I ran the risk of seeing someone I know. There was also the big unknown of how well I could really do so soon after the marathon. But, I was feeling really good, so I decided to go for it.

On the way down, I suddenly began to feel really nauseous, and a bit ill overall. I thought that if it didn't pass, I'd just forget about the race, and go to my work (which is right down the street from the race) and puke and lie down for a while. But, it did pass, and I was feeling well enough to sign up and pay my money. Approximately 20 seconds after the money left my hand, I started feeling sick again. It was too late to get my money back, but not too late to write it off and head back home. Again, though, it shortly passed.

I warmed up a little, and waited at the start, and the nausea still never came back. However, I had all sorts of visions of having to pull over and puke in the bushes, so I made a conscious decision not to push myself too hard so that I wouldn't embarrass myself like that. It's one thing to turn in a winning performance and have to puke after. It's something entirely different to be running at sort of a middle of the pack pace and then have to puke halfway through.

Despite this conscious decision to rein it in, I still started off too fast. I maintained the too fast pace for long enough to do 7:11 for the first mile, but I definitely slowed down a little from there. In the second mile, even though I was slowing down, I passed a few of the people who had passed me previously. These were people who evidently had even more of a problem of starting out too fast than I did. One of the guys I passed looked about my age, so I was especially motivated to stay ahead of him once I had passed him. In the third mile, my shoe came untied. Since I've started running, that's only the second time that's happened, and only the first time in a race. I wasn't going to stop for it, so I just let my laces flop around for a half mile. I'll probably start having to remember to double-knot them in races, now.

There was a little out and back section right before the end, and once I started heading back, I could see that I was about a minute ahead of the other dude my age. So, I eased up just a little. But, once I rounded the last turn and could see the clock, I was really surprised by how good my time was. So, I turned it up at the very end to try to take another second or two off. My final result was 23:11. That was good for 12th place overall (out of 100) and 1st in the M 35-39 division.

I'm tickled pink about this. It's over a minute and a half off my PR, and it's my first real award (I'm not counting the "award" at the stake 5K since it's not really clear that I actually placed what I thought I did there). I did it 1 week after a marathon and on the verge of puking, too. Looking at that time, I feel like if the race was a few weeks after the marathon, and I wasn't sick, I could have pulled out 22:30 easily.

The only drawback to winning something is having to wait around until afterwards to get your award. This race took forever to hand them out, because they had to wait for everyone to finish the 5K, then they ran a 1 mile fun run. After that, they gave out like 1000 raffle prizes (yet still not drawing me for some reason). Then and only then did they do awards. I got a big ol' medal. I'm more proud of it than I am my marathon finisher medals. The finisher medals just don't have as much meaning anymore. I mean, they'll give those things out to just anyone who runs 26.2 miles.

The great 5K finish reaffirms my commitment to work on speed between marathons. So, starting next week I'll do another 6 week cycle of some speed workouts. My intent is to break 22:30 in the 5K by the end of February. I'll still be doing long runs on Saturday to start building back up for Ogden, but I won't switch in to structured marathon training until I get this speed goal out of the way.

I think it's a little bit crazy to jump right into the speedwork right after the last marathon. But, on the other hand, my body still feels really good, and adding it up, I only did about 10 miles this week. So, even starting the speedwork, I'll plan on only doing 15-20 next week, then get up closer to 25-30 the week after that. So, with any luck, my body will take advantage of what little rest interval I'm giving it. If I pull or tear or break something in the next few weeks, though, I'll definitely go back and reread this post and wonder just what in the world I was thinking.

Training paces for this round of speedwork:

Race goal pace: 7:15
800 - 3:37
400 - 1:48
200 - 0:54

Speed pace: 6:45
800 - 3:22
400 - 1:41
200 - 0:50

Tempo pace: 7:55
Long run pace: 9:30