Weekends are for long runs, right? Well, I fit them in where I can. Three saturdays ago was the Delano Park 12 hour race, so I did get 41 miles done that weekend. The last two have not been so kind, but they don't have to be. I'm in taper now.
Two weekends ago was a blast. It was supposed to be my last big weekend, getting 20 miles each day Saturday and Sunday. I ended up only going to the State Capital Building and back each day, getting 10.1 miles instead of 20. Ok, I'll take it. The reason happened to be my fraternity brother Pat's birthday party in Charlotte.
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| the whole table (now with me in green on the right) |
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| All of the brothers about to sing |
This dinner party was on the northwest side of Charlotte, so it was about a 3 hour drive each way. I didn't stick around for the after-dinner festivities, opting to get back to Raleigh so I'd still be able to run on Sunday and hopefully do some other stuff too.
Well the time change screwed me up, as it always does. It's so hard to spring forward. Throws off the day, and the entire week ahead. So I didn't get out of bed until after 11 am and it started raining later in the afternoon, so I had a brief window of daylight to get my miles done. One capital run was all I could get. And I was not hungover.
The time change also screwed up all of the morning stuff. No yoga or strength stuff before work, having trouble waking up with the alarm, argh. all of that. no thanks. it's terrible and I hate it every year.
At least this puts me into taper. Two weeks from today (sunday night) I will be done with this Umstead 100. I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to do something other sport, like get back in the pool. Hanging out with the family more would be nice as well.
In fact, that's how I missed thursday night's planned 7 miler, and the 15's both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Thursday night I had to go pick up a raft with one of the other dads in Evil Genius's Indian Princess tribe, then Saturday EG and I went out to the Neuse River to decorate it.
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| The boat in the truck |
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| EG painting her section |
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| Rocking a giant unicorn masthead |
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| Give a tagger some spraypaint |
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| I really enjoyed getting to hang out with the other dads |
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| Represent! |
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| The girls in front of their raft |
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| Beautiful time on the river |
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| One of the kids convinced me to put on her shirt |
EG and I had a blast together. It was just an overnight trip, 8 of the 10 of us stayed overnight in one of the other dad's river house. There may have been beer and poker, but EG and I still got plenty of time to hang out too, and she got lots of fun time with her friends. The raft is not exactly hydrodynamic, but it should perform quite well for them at the spring outing this year.
The kids were actually in Myrtle Beach all of this past week with Kelley's mom (and Kelley for most of the week), so I had most of the week to myself. And that was really nice too. Saturday I actually ended up meeting Neena partway between Raleigh and Myrtle Beach to get EG, then the two of us took off for Arapahoe, NC. Sunday I might have woken up with a bit of a hangover, and that might be my first hangover after turning 40. So I always forget how much they hurt. By the time we got back to Raleigh on Sunday afternoon, I was in no condition to run the 15 miles that were on my training plan. So I'm taking this taper thing pretty seriously, including a 5 day no-running time.
I still have 6 runs totaling 40 miles on the training plan. This really is coming down to crunch time. it's fantastic.
1 comment:
Ha, I love that you put on one of the girl's shirts. You are such a trooper. I bet the kids found that very funny!
It will be great to have this race behind you. Whatever happens out there, I'm sure you've learned a lot in the training process. I hope that you have a good race experience. 100s are just freaking unreal - I really can't fathom running that far and for that long, so I commend anyone who even TRIES to do one!
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