God Bless You Please, Mrs. Robinson

Phase II - Regressive Count - Week Fourteen
08/20/07 - 08/26/07
Week Total: 25.4

I just finished my 13.1 miles of training. Half-Marathon. Who would've thought?

Same route than my last long distance, from Seward Park to McGilvra, and adding a hilly area: E. Galer (upward slope, thanks God is short), and Madison (slight (?) upward slope).

When I was going through E. Galer I felt good, I felt however that instead of running I was snowshoeing. Then in Madison a "slight upward slope" that did not look slight to me, but it was delicious when I started going down the hill to reach Lake Washington Blvd again. Then coming back, the delicious "slight downward slope" became a "slight upward slope" and the horrible upward slopes became downward.

Luckily, my fastest songs were at this point with Mrs. Robinson with 183 bpm going down the hill. God bless you please, Mrs. Robinson.  I felt invincible when I got back to flat McGilvra. With 8 miles on my feet I said to myself: "Nobody can't stop me".

But 3 miles later I felt running out of gas. In top of that I was also running out of water. When I got to mile 12 I discovered that I still had 8 oz. so I took a GU and drank the bottle, and thought that I could run at a good speed, but it was too late. I couldn't. I dragged my feet for 1.5 miles. When I stopped, at mile 13.1, my legs were glycogen depleted. I couldn't move at any speed. I hit the wall.

My car was parked 1.5 miles from the 13.1 mark. I did that to force myself to cool down, but I barely could walk. After a while I recovered and walked with pleasure feeling the breeze on my face, meanwhile watching boats and people enjoying a pleasant Summer day.

I did not take walk breaks during this run, and I didn't gain much. I will maintain the breaks for the long runs to guarantee late, or no-depletion (if I could only guarantee that!)

My interval work this week was good. I ran them (1' intervals) at an average of 7.52 min/mile without the recovery and 8.35 with recovery.

Again, I am amazed what a person is able to do. I compare my first week, 15 weeks ago, being able of running only a minute, after walking a minute. This week, my run of 7 miles looked to me like a short run.

My marathon time should be around 5:30. Not bad after a 9-year hiatus.

Thanks to my beautiful daughter Alejandra I am back in love with running.