This weekend many of my running group members are in Virginia Beach for the Rock n' Roll Half Marathon. Here are a couple pictures I've received from their first couple days there - looks heavenly!
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| Cindy relaxing on the beach the day before the run! |
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| View from Grace's Hotel Room |
While many of the half marathoners in our group were in Virginia Beach this weekend the marathoners had a benchmark run scheduled. The gentleman I always run with was going to be in charge of creating and marking out the route for the group's run on Saturday morning. I told him I would run the route with him on Friday so he didn't have to alone. We had a concert to go to in Toronto Friday night so I was happy to get the 30k run done with prior to the concert so I could sleep in on Saturday morning. He wanted to run the route to mark it rather than bike it so that he was done as well and could stay at "home base" to support the other runners Saturday morning.
So many things were just not right with us doing 30k on Friday. First of all, it was hot! I'm probably going to say (and have said) that I don't want to train for a Fall marathon again! I don't like the heat! Ugh! It was 80 degrees with no breeze. Our only saving grace was that it was cloudy for most of our run.
We started our run at 11:30 a.m. because the hubby needed to work in the morning and I didn't have anyone for the boys. It's just an odd time to start a long run like that. I'm used to running significant distances first thing in the morning, not mid day.
The final nail in the coffin for this run was that we were marking the route for the group to follow on Saturday morning. We stopped on average every 1/2 kilometer or so. It was nice to stop and take a quick drink of water in the heat, but it was horrible that we never got into a rhythm of running. It was too choppy.
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| Marking the Route |
We only made it 19 of the 30k we were planning on running. We just didn't have it in us any longer. I was feeling so good about my marathon training up to this point. This 30k run was going to really give me a feeling of running the long distance and prepare me for our longest training run of 35k in a few weeks. But we didn't want to push it. With the heat we both stopped sweating and our legs felt like lead! It wasn't worth making ourselves sick or worse - getting injured!
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| Really tough 19k |
We decided that we would meet with the rest of the group on Saturday morning and run another 10k to make up for the the 10k that we didn't do on Friday. This heat is just killing me. At 8:00 in the morning it was already 80 degrees, the humidity was high, there was no breeze again and this time it was sunny! Luckily I only had 10k to push out and was able to do that. I definitely felt the fatigue in my legs from the 19k the day before so although all 29k wasn't ran together I feel like I got my long distance in this weekend.
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| 10k add on run |
I guess I was bound to have a long run weekend like this along the way with my training. It reminds me of this quote from the movie A League of Their Own (which is a great movie I can watch over and over again!):
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| It's suppose to be hard. . . |
It's the first day of a new month and less than 42 days until the start of the marathon. Plenty of time for me to make up for this weekend's terrible feeling runs. I'm training well everywhere else so I need to keep my head up and my feet moving one in front of the other. Chicago will be great!
Have a great rest of the last weekend of summer!
