I was kind of distracted with company, etc when I wrote my last 2 posts so they were a touch light on details and my thoughts on how things went on the weekend runs. I figured I would do a weekend recap post to kind of cover that off.
So I did the total scheduled miles for the weekend but not in the way / grouping that I had planned – I also didn’t get in a run longer than half marathon distance like I had hoped. These things happen but at least I did get out and run in the heat even though I had company over and could have used either of those things as an excuse to not run. Times were ok on both runs and they both felt relatively good considering the heat and the bit of extra weight I was (and still am) carrying. With both I seemed to default in around 6.2 mph unless I pushed – that is certainly better than things have been in the past but doesn’t really give me a good idea on how fast I will be once I get into a race and start to push. That being said the heat was high enough that I shouldn’t have been pushing on the weekend anyway so the lower speed isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
My next race is the Cash Store Financial Freedom Run for Diabetes Research on September 2nd. Current long range forecast doesn’t have race day up on it yet but it does go to the day before and that shows up currently as a high of 30C (86F) and a low of 14C (57F) – that is a pretty warm temperature for the high but the low is doable for racing in – now depending on the humidity things could feel a lot warmer than that though.
This raises the question as to if I will be able to push hard on the half marathon or not – with the hope of getting nearer to my personal best for a half marathon on this race, I wonder if that is still achievable or even wise to try. If it is going to be anywhere near what it was for temperature this weekend first thing in the morning then pushing too hard would have health risks that I won’t be wanting to deal with.
That then raises the next question – should I be bothering to taper this week? If I am not expecting to push hard on the upcoming race then maybe I don’t need to taper and store extra fuel in the muscles but instead push harder and add extra training runs this week to start recovering my weight loss that I partially sabotaged this weekend. I was 223.5 this morning when I got up which puts me 4.5 pounds up from last Monday – I had weight gain over the week that I discussed before in a few recent posts but I had that almost cleared up and then with company this weekend (and tonight as well) I definitely ate more than I would have planned and drank more than usual as well (both Coke and beer) – this all added up and it should all be temporary but I really want to get my weight back down as quickly as possible so that I am can continue to progress.
At this point now I am trying to decide if I should run on the treadmill tonight or not – it is not scheduled but I would be tempted to run every day this week leading up to the half marathon to help push the weight loss but I’m not entirely sure that is wise either. So the wisest choice might be to add a run on the treadmill tonight (which was not scheduled), continue the scheduled runs Tuesday through Thursday (30 minutes each but might make Wednesday longer – up to an hour) and then re-evaluate after Thursday night after I can see a better forecast for the race day. If it looks like it will be too hot on race day I will add runs on Friday and Saturday that aren’t scheduled to add some more miles and aid the weight loss but if it looks like the weather will be good for a push then I will avoid running on Friday and Saturday and depending on how I feel I might reduce the run length of 4.5 on Sunday down to a couple miles to aid in recovery.
Lots of decisions to be made – hopefully I make the right ones! Even if I choose incorrectly I will still have 2 more races coming up that I can keep pushing towards.
Hmmm – Goofy Challenge race and half challenge is at 99%…..decisions, decisions.
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