It's been a very eventful week in Virginia to say the least. Just in the past seven days we've dealt with the extreme smoke from the lateral west fire in the Dismal Swamp, a 5.9 earthquake in Mineral, VA (about 150 miles from our house), and the big mother, Hurricane Irene. As of right now, we have some powerful thunderstorms headed our way as well as another TORNADO WARNING! Geez!
Well, we are sooo thankful that we were able to come away with very minimal water damage in our garage. There is quite a bit of debris to clean up as well, but we got the day off from work to take care of the mess. Some of our neighbors did not fare as well because their property sits a bit lower and many have a slab foundation. Our house is up a few feet higher than our neighbors because of our crawl space foundation.
Running was okay this week, still taking all of my iron supplements and working on adding more iron to my diet. I didn't feel great this week, but still felt I would have a good race on Saturday.
The race itself was crazy. First, we didn't even know if they were going to let us run because of the hurricane. We decided we were going to evacuate on Friday and we had to take Bella with us, so we found a hotel in Ashland that was pet-friendly. We figured either way we would be safe from the Hurricane and maybe we would get to run if the race was still on. Well, they made the decision on Saturday morning to go through with it. I was nervous for various reasons but excited to race since it had been so long. The first mile marker than I saw was at mile 3, and I figured out I was running 6:45 pace, which was ok. I was aiming to start at 6:40 and drop it down to 6:30. Unfortunately that didn't work out because we ran straight into the wind for miles 5-10. I was still at 6:45 pace by mile 10, and feeling fine although I was having a lot more thoughts than usual. Usually I am very focused on the race and have very few thoughts that I can remember.
There was a long downhill before the hill I knew was coming at mile 11. Well... no one said it was going to be a MILE LONG! Literally, the mile 12 marker was at the top of the effing hill. Seriously! My legs were dead, my shoes sopping wet from the rain, but I pumped my arms as hard as I could to get myself going again. A few people pased me, and they were going a lot faster than me. My other thought was SHIT! I came to the mile 13 marker and looked at my watch and it said 1:29:15 and then I said it out loud "SHIT!". Well, I got to the line right at 1:30, and I was mad! The guy handed me a third place plaque, all smiles, I faked a smile back to him. I was soooo royally pissed. I laid on the grass, soaking wet from the rain, more rain pelting me, but I didn't care. I had been thinking this whole week that I would run 1:26- 1:27 on flat course, but with the hills I figured 1:27- 1:28. Never did think I would run another 1:30. I ran that time in March when I was only running 2-3 days per week and had no training plan. I've put in 12 solid weeks of 55-70 miles per week, and now basically no improvement? I'm still annoyed, but getting over it. I know the wind was bad but I'm pretty tough and figured I would power through it.
Eventually I quit being a baby and enjoyed the rest of the weekend of being temporary 'fugees. First we got the hell out of that "Quality" Inn we were staying at. We found a much nicer pet-friendly hotel in Richmond, a newly-remodeled Holiday Inn with a huge flat screen TV, King-size bed with nice linens, and a fully-equipped fitness room. We enjoyed some drinks and dinner and watched coverage of the storm all night. Bella was very excited because there were so many guests with dogs. It was her dream come true.
So... here's this week's summary:
Monday: off
Tuesday: 5 miles
Wednesday: AM 5 miles/ PM 6 miles
Thursday: 5 miles
Friday: 4 miles
Saturday: 14 miles (1 mile warm up, 13.1 race, didn't feel like cooling down)
Sunday: weak treadmill attempt of 5 miles
Total: 44 miles
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