Saturday, August 23, 2008

Back... and with 24.5 miles!!!

Marathon Plan - Regressive Countdown - Week Sixteen
08/11/08 - 08/17/08
Week Total: 24.5

Hi friends, I've missed you as I've missed running. From July 07th till August 02nd I was pretty much in jail. 2 weeks in Huntsville, AL, and 2 weeks in Washington DC, logging very long work hours. I worked 85 hours in one of those weeks. We had a deadline, and "get it done" was the task.... As you can imagine, my priority, other than work, was to sleep... Needing to cross the country for each of these trips added to my exhaustion. I was pretty much destroyed.

The results of this involuntary hiatus was a total of 16 miles in five weeks. SIXTEEN!!!! When I do 16 miles in a week it is a low-mileage week!!!!!!! Fortunately it's over.

I started on the 11th my marathon training plan and it went way better than expected. Although I found out I lost all speed I gained during my first portion of the year, my endurance was still there.

This week#16 was not free of travel, of course. I did my speed work in Seattle, but I had again to cross the country to Philadelphia on Wednesday. When I arrived at 3pm I felt I needed to run. But it's summer, right? and Philly was HOT! So, no choice but a hot gym to run 8 miles on the treadmill. I needed to pour cold water on me every 20 minutes, as the temperature in the whole hotel was 78F!!!!!! Anyway, I felt successful.

Back home I found there was a heat wave in Seattle. So my long run on Sunday morning was at 75F. A High School in my route had their sprinklers system on and one of the valves was broken, so every time I passed I took a delicious shower to refresh myself. Another successful day completing 12.4 miles.


Happy to be back.... and with 24.5 miles!!! Now, I am going to catch up with your stories...

4 comments:

Susan said...

Welcome back!

Yeesh - very long hours. Poor you! But, as you said, at least it's over. Victory!

MarathonChris said...

Welcome back!!! Boy can I relate to that schedule. It is NO fun at all! Glad you survived and are back on the running road again. Hopefully we can squeeze those miles in between the travel. I have a horrible time training when traveling! You do great!

Irish Blue said...

It's good to have you back lady. Good luck with the training. Sounds like you'll be fine. I'm sure your body will react to the increased mileage quickly and you will be completely aclimated in a jiff.

ShirleyPerly said...

Wow, your traveling sounds very much like my husband's! Glad the big deadline is over and great to hear that you've not lost much endurance. You know all of us here in the South are very envious of your mid-70 degree weather. My house is usually set to 82 in the summer to avoid taxing the AC system too much so running on a treadmill indoors can still be pretty warm!