RUNNING BY THE UMPQUA

A little slice of heaven. Our "home base" from the camping trip this last weekend.

This week was a "down" week in my marathon training, meaning I only had to run 12 miles this weekend. Wohoo! I still kind of feel like I ran 20, but I'll get into that in a little bit.

I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I was getting slower and I was frustrated with my paces recently. Most people going through marathon training probably go through the same thing. When I was just out running six miles and no more it was a lot easier to go near tempo pace all the time. Now I have long runs and need to let my body recover. Before that tempo speed was my "go to" speed when I started to run... now my go to speed is something around 9:00/mile.

Anyways, I needed to prove to myself that I still had that speed in me, so at run group Wednesday I announced I was going to have a fast run (basically, sorry, I am not going to stay behind and chat). Luckily, Alejandro was up for the challenge along with two girls from a local high school cross country team. We ran six miles and averaged 7:43 a mile. It was a challenge, but still very doable. I DO have it in me. It was a challenge but not really a struggle, if that makes sense. I felt great the next day too, no worse for the wear!

I planned to run again Thursday after work, but some stuff happened that didn't allow that to transpire. I was leaving to go camping on the piece of property my family owns on the Umpqua River with my family Friday morning and I was bringing along Brandon from Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Anyways, I ended up having to pick him up at 6pm Thursday night because there was no way picking him up in the morning would work. So that shot my run plans that night (I had him convinced to run 4 miles with me for about five minutes before TV sounded better to him).

So, anyways, I REALLY wanted to get that third weekday run in, so I ended up waking up at 7am Friday morning to run almost 5 miles. That is insane for me to wake up at 7am to run. Probably the first time I ever did that when it wasn't a race. I wish I could have enjoyed the beautiful morning more, but I slept on the floor because I gave Brandon my bed. Stupid mistake! I shouldn't be so nice, he's a kid, he can curl on the floor no problem. Me? I maybe got four hours of sleep and it wasn't good sleep. Anyways, that morning run was a death march but I got it done.

Once that was over we left to go camping and it was an AWESOME three days. Loved every minute of it. I even got a twelve mile run in along Garden Valley Road right near where we camped. The run went really well, I averaged 8:52 over the 12 miles and only had one mile over nine minutes. I didn't feel the greatest when I started the run (another night sleeping on the ground) but eventually I loosened up and had a great time. Was hitting sub-nine without too much effort.

I still kind of feel like I ran twenty miles though. Three straight nights of sleeping on the floor/ground and not a good night of sleep between them. My legs felt crampy the morning after my long run because I couldn't really stretch them out fully in my sleeping bag. Seven hours of sleep in my bed last night (heavenly!) but I think I needed about four more to feel refreshed. Anyways, my body is still kind of creaky and sore. Six miles at run group tonight. Yay?