July 21, 2013

Lazy 10K Prep

I had a great lazy running week.

My Garmin is dead.  So, I've been doing my best with it in it's less-than-awesome state as a very expensive stopwatch.

Total mileage for the week?  23.6.  The most since the SF 1st half marathon.

That feels good.  And, I feel less sloth-like.

The week's efforts before Sunday consisted of an easy 2.5 miles in So-Cal out to the beach and back at A&B's, followed by a hard TM effort for 20 minutes at the hotel (increasing effort every 1 minute is *no* joke!), an easy 6.2 mile effort on Thursday, and 3.5 miles easy on Saturday.

Today, I headed over to the east-bay and met Jen for a pseudo-long run, which, frankly, was guaranteed to feel like a long run for me since I'd failed to do anything remotely long for over a month.  We'd planned on 13, but I'd begged off, due to my lame fitness, so we settled on 9 for me (4 before for Jen) and I brought my friend, the super-speedy and talented F.

I had a wonderful time.  It had been so long since I'd done a long trail run with friends where the goal was conversation and bonding and finishing the distance without any focus on time.  This type of long run essentially disappeared when I lost E2 as a running buddy.  She and I always let the slower one pick the pace on long runs.  The goal was just to enjoy ourselves and finish.  I felt today, on the trails, walking intermittently, running up the hills when I felt confident enough to charge, that I used to be a more balanced runner.  And I felt like I returned to that today!  (Also, I can't help but note that I was in better shape when running with E2 than I am now, running on my own, with charts and tables and the occasional friend, but no regular, easy, let's just get the weekend's distance done buddy.)

Anyways, I'm very pleased with the week on my feet.  I look forward to the next one.



2 comments:

Jen said...

I'm SO glad you and F came over to the East Bay and that you had a good time. I don't know what I would've done without you both to pull me along, so thanks for the company!

BTW, THANK YOU for the produce -- I'm going to make a tomato and cucumber salad tonight! :)

Biting Tongue said...

@Jen -- thanks for inviting us. Glad you will be enjoying the tomatoes and cukes.