It’s been a while since my last post, because honestly, there hasn’t been too much to post about. Following Transrockies I took a few days off and did some easy runs. To get ready for my next big race – Chicago Marathon, I followed the easy week with a 90mile week, but was struggling with low energy in my workouts. The third week out from Transrockies was more of the same. I hit around 115miles for the week, but on my last run of the week, which was a long run on A1 Forest Service Road, my body broke down on me.
After that I run, I did some thinking… Looking back, my body has been tired since I was about 2weeks out from Day 1 of TransRockies. Though I took some down time, I don’t think it was enough… my body is pretty hosed. First it was due to the wicked training we did for TransRockies.. then add the actual TransRockies race and I was pretty well in the tank.
As such, my focus over the next few weeks… Get Rested. Hit Some Solid Workouts. Get Ready to Run Fast at Chicago . So this week, my miles dipped down to just under 70miles, but I had a solid 200m workout on Wednesday, and a good tempo run on Saturday at the Tour de Pee Vee Half Marathon in Prescott .
The race was a really low key “local” style race. It started at 7am, so I had to wake early and hit the road by 4:30am… ouch!!..
The course was surprisingly difficult. Not only does it start and finish at an altitude of 5,100ft, but the race was constantly rolling up and down hills. It was not what I would call a fast race, but it was fun to run over some new terrain.
I ended up posting a 1hr 12min 15sec time over the course, which I was pretty happy with considering the level of difficulty. This was good enough for 1st Place and a new Course Record. Coming into the race, my hope to run right at 1hr 12min “comfortably”. I felt I achieved this as I never felt as if I had to dig too deep, excluding a couple of the long uphills around mile 10.
At this point, I feel as if I am headed in the right direction. I think that my original goal of running a 2hr 17min Marathon at Chicago is not out of reach, but it really all depends on what happens over the next couple weeks and on race day. I am going to focus on what I can control and I think good things will happen…