ORN: This dark, crisp morning, I ran my last long tempo run of the FIRST marathon plan. I ran eight miles in 1:17'42", which wasn't great when you consider my target pace was 9'19". Still, for me, for the hilly course I ran, I am not complaining. Some of my mile splits were pretty good. You can tell in the list below where the hills were killing me and when I dug deep and fought back. Ideally, these would have been consistent; ideally, the course would have been flat and free beer would have been waiting for me at the end. Da splits:
- 9'37"
- 9'26"
- 9'25"
- 9'54"
- 10'04" <-- oof!
- 9'40"
- 9'58" <-- huurrggg!
- 9'34"
The highlight of today's run was the young deer that scared the manure out of me around the sixth mile. I was plodding along, listening to my watch tell me to run faster, like it had for the previous hour or so, when I saw these blue-green phosphorescent lights in the woods at my eye-level. Plainly, they were animal eyes staring back at me. I thought to myself, "Wow. Those are too high off the ground and far apart to be a raccoon and too big to be a cat. WTF?" My curiosity held the beam of my headlamp fixed on the shapeless nothing that owned the eyes, and the malevolent void in the trees kept its gaze fixed on me. I'm sure the animal was probably thinking the same thing I was -- WTF? Will that thing eat me? But it didn't move as I drew closer. It just stared. And so did I.
I didn't soil my armor until -- VOOM! -- it suddenly turned and sped off, barely eight feet away from me, and I recognized it was a massive doe. In an instant, every YouTube video of a crazed deer attacking somebody flashed before my eyes, and my heart flopped around like a fish at the bottom of a boat. In that second, I knew I was going to die; a deer was going to kick my arsch. At least I had my Road ID on so my hoof-marked corpse would be easily identified. Then, a second-and-a-half later, it was all over. The doe had disappeared through the brush toward safety, and my fear response was back in check. "I'm totally blogging this," I thought as I lumbered on.
Warning: the rest of this post is going to be bragging. This week is my peak week, and so far I have been rocking it. I started my week with an easy recovery run after running 15 miles on Sunday. I nailed my 10x400 intervals on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I returned to the pool after a long absence and did laps [not so great, performance-wise, but yayyy pool!] Then yesterday, I did a hard 30 minutes on a stationary bike. My point is that I have worked out, either cross-trained or ran, every day this week, and every workout was purposeful and quality. [We can debate the "quality" of Monday's run over strong, heavy beer. You're buying.]
Of course, I'm not done with the week yet. I still have Sunday's long run to do, the Downtown Doubler 30K, which I am going to stretch into my final 20-miler before the marathon. I am not worried about this race one bit; in fact I am looking forward to it. The course is flat as can be, apart from the "hill repeat" at the Water Tower, and quite lovely -- mostly running along River Road. I ought to blaze through it. In fact, it'll be the perfect test of my fitness level for Chicago since Chicago's course is flat, too. [Thanks to Helga for letting me have her registration. I wasn't planning on running this, but she had a last-minute schedule conflict.]
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