LA week -6

This training schedule is hard and this week was full of workouts where I failed to hit the goal workouts.  Should be interesting to see where I end up at the end.

Mon - rest and a small walk.

Tue - 33 minute recovery run (was supposed to be the speed work I tried to do on Wed, but I couldn't hack it)

Wed - ran to the track as a warm-up, finished 2.5 of the assigned 1000m speed intervals at the assigned pace, felt like I was going to puke, called it early and ran home as a cooldown.

Thur - 50 minute easy run (avg 10ish).  An additional 3.5 walking.

Fri - off, walk 1.5 hilly miles in SF carrying my virtual office in a bag.

Sat - 30 minutes easy -- 3.11 @ 9:39

Sun - 14 with H.  This was supposed be a fast finish run, 8 miles easy followed by 6 at target race pace.  We did the 8 easy, no problem.  Then 1.68 at 9:10; a water stop and 2 minutes of walking; 1.05 @ 9:30 and I had to admit defeat.  I could not muster up anything fast, so we just jogged the remainder at an 11:00 pace and included a short walk break.

Essentially, I fell apart on this run.  Rather than inspiring me to feel like I could work hard at race pace when I was tired, it made me feel like race pace was going to be impossible to maintain.

After the fact, I did some analysis comparing last weekend's run (which had been hard, but I'd been able to maintain an even effort and push a bit at the end) with yesterday's.

Both had an easy run the day before with E.  Both had a banana and coffee before the run.

Last weekend, I had a couple of glasses of wine on Saturday night and just followed up with lots of water.  This weekend, I had no alcohol and hydrated like crazy.  As much as I'd like to say that the wine must be the performance-enhancing variable, I think that's probably not the case.

Both Saturdays I'd eaten vegetarian.  But last weekend, I had vegetable and fruit juice for lunch and made cheesy tomato millet for dinner and ate a healthy serving.  This weekend I had a cheesy buttery croissant (I left the ham and turkey filling for E) for breakfast/lunch and then beet salad over cabbage with feta for dinner.  Okay, so maybe I didn't carb load as well as I should have.

I took gatorade and 3 gus on the 16 miler.  Somehow, yesterday, even though I brought them, I never got around to taking more than just one gu.  Okay, so maybe I should have taken another gu when I felt like I had to walk before I could start running again. 

And then there was the 2 hours of insomnia from midnight to 2 AM this Sunday AM.  I still got 6 hours of sleep and didn't feel exhausted, but perhaps those hours really matter?

I'm not sure I am willing to chalk up my inability to hit Sunday's long run with a fast finish entirely on a weak night of sleep and lack of carbs the night before and fuel during the run.  But, I guess I can comfort myself with the knowledge that I unintentionally got in a good 30 minutes of carb-depleted training in at the end. 

Oh well, 37.28 blah miles total for the week.  I can't really believe I'm going to run a marathon in 6 weeks, but I suspect next weekend's 20-miler will make that reality much more clear to me.