Christine and I are getting ready to go on vacation. I leave Friday for Nashville where Christine will be running in the Nashville Country Music Marathon. I'm really looking forward to this trip. The following weekend, we will be in Eureka, CA to participate in the Avenue of the Giants 1/2-marathon. I haven't done a 1/2 since the debacle that was the San Francisco Marathon last year where I did it, with little recent training. I paid the price in severely swollen feet and lots of pain...
I've been trying to squeeze in some walking over the last month and a half. It's been tough with my heavy riding schedule and because of work. I've managed to get in a few 5-6 milers on the weekend and have been trying to walk Monday nights with some former walk team friends.
My half marathon is in two weeks. Standard procedure is that you taper (rest) the week before the event so that means that this last weekend was my long mileage weekend. I wasn't looking forward to a long walk in the heat the day after a 70 mile, 4400 feet of climbing ride but c'est la vie. I headed out on Sunday morning at 8am armed with my new kicks and a goal of 10-miles. I decided that it is really too late to work on speed so I was just going to concentrate on getting the miles in. There is a ridiculously long time limit of 8 hours at the Giants event as there are many people running the full marathon. Time won't be an issue so I've elected to just take my time and do the distance. I would normally average a few minutes over 3 hours for a 1/2-marathon when I was doing them regularly. This time, I've set a goal of finishing within 4 hours.
I didn't quite get the 10-miles on Sunday but I'm happy with the 9 and a quarter. I could have definitely gone further but I had miscalculated the distance and I was too close to home and it was too hot to go after 3/4 miles walking around the block. I'm going to do some more work the following week and will hopefully be ready for Avenue of the Giants.
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