Notes
An easy 3 mile run to start a recovery week after 3 weeks of solid mileage building. The weather was beautiful, and though the 5:30am alarm is a little brutal, as soon as I was out I was glad to be out, and I know come 9pm and post-track meet tonight I will be really glad I've already run for the day.
It's still a little disheartening to think that 3 weeks of really purposeful and hard-fought building ends in a week of 30 miles. However, Anders and I have talked a lot about this over the last few weeks, and I think we've determined a way of going about training and talking about training that is helpful to me.
Here are some of those thoughts: The fact that my fitness and training is where it is, is something I need to remember and need to respect, even though it is sometimes disheartening. And after a lot of conversations, we've decided I need to use terms and vocabulary and think about training as I always would, in order to facilitate that respect. For example, even though in the past 30 miles wouldn't have been a volume I had to build for, that is absolutely my reality right now. Similarly, an 8 mile run wouldn't usually be "long", but it absolutely is right now. Therefore acknowledging that 30 was a huge accomplishment and the end of a monumental build allows me to more easily accept that this week needs to be a down week and needs to be recovery, even though the number 30 would not usually necessitate that. Additionally, I need to continue to call 8 and 9 mile runs, long runs, in order to more easily allow myself to take easy days afterwards. Etc, Etc.
And finally, even over the last two weeks my mentality and excitement has changed dramatically simply because I'm thinking about my running as training again. I've found that using the vocabulary of training and thinking about the principles of training again in talking about and planning my running, has helped me to be more excited, be more myself, and picture myself as a racer again.
More to come.