All of my training this summer was focused toward this past weekend.  I was concerned that I had peaked too early because my Leesburg 20K and Ragnar DC both went very well, and then my body just started rebelling.  I wondered if I had over-trained (or run those two races too hard), because it was one little tweak after another.  I took time off as needed, and I was afraid that I would pay for it at the Hokie Half Marathon, my focal race of the fall.

Monday
Monday should more or less be considered a rest day.  I ran/walked 1.75 miles with a client at a 14:38 pace.  Later in the day I walked 1 mile (15:18 pace) on a treadmill while my client warmed up.

Tuesday
Many of our MRTT ladies were racing this past weekend, so we skipped our hill workout and ran 5.5 miles at an easy conversation pace of 9:29.

DarkRunShoeDaisy

Wednesday
I had the opportunity to participate in a 3-D Gait Analysis at George Mason University’s Smart Lab on Wednesday.  It was a very cool experience.  I’ll be dedicating a full recap to it later in the week, and will be giving away two 3-D Gait Analysis sessions to two local readers.  Please stay tuned!

GMUFreedomFitnessCenter

Thursday
I woke up to texts from two of my running friends saying they were sick on Thursday morning, so there were only two of us running.  We met at 5:30 AM for 5 miles (9:09 average pace), and for the first time, I had an uneasy feeling during our run.  We always see lots of runners and bikers, but there are times that no one else is around.  As we crossed a small road on a pretty secluded part of the trail three men came walking perpendicularly toward us from the road.  We could smell cigarette smoke, so we knew that they weren’t out for their morning workout.  We continued on with our run, and Kelley mentioned that she had her pepper spray (I didn’t have mine).  We turned around, and as we approached the area of the trail where we had seen the men, we saw them walking along the trail individually, and because we were wearing our headlamps and running straight toward them, we could see that they were highway workers wearing hardhats and reflective vests; and one of them was carrying a coffee cup.  They replied to our, “Good mornings,” and one of them said that he wished he had as much energy as we did.

When we got back to the parking lot, I snapped a quick selfie of our skeleton reflective vests.  When it’s completely dark at the end of our run, there are not many photo options.

ReflectiveVestSelfie

Friday
Bill and drove to Blacksburg on Friday afternoon, and rested for the race.

Saturday
We had the curtains drawn tightly in our hotel room, and our room was almost totally dark come sunrise.  We slept well past sunrise and got a total of ten hours of sleep!  We had considered going for a short hike, but with the recent rains we were afraid the trails would be muddy and slippery, and didn’t want to risk falling and hurting ourselves the day before our race.

Instead, we walked about two miles around campus on our way to Greek’s Cellar, one of our favorite pizza places when were at Tech.

GreeksCellar

The pizza was as good as we remembered, but we ordered too big of a pie and threw almost half of it away.  It was a perfect lunch!  I’m not sure if I’ve ever had pizza the day before a race, but two slices and some salad seemed perfect!

GreeksCellarPizzaSalad
It’s a good thing we got plenty of sleep on Friday night, because I slept poorly on Saturday night, and my 4:45 AM alarm went off way too soon!

Sunday
Finally, race morning was here!  It rained during the entire Hokie Half Marathon and I finished in 1:55:26 (8:48 pace).  Right after the race, I dodged raindrops to stop by the time-keeping tent to ask when the awards ceremony would be.  I was told that it had been canceled, but they could give me my official time, but not place.  Either I misunderstood, or was told the wrong time, and thought I’d PR’d.  Instead, I missed PR’ing by 52 seconds.  Still, I met my goal of running a sub 2-hour half on a hilly course, and cut 11 minutes off of last year’s Hokie Half!  Lesson learned, don’t post anything until you see it in writing!  Of course, I’ll be writing a complete recap in the next day or two, and hopefully, age group results will be posted by then.

HokieHalfFitSnapWithCorrections
I’m thrilled that my training went so well this summer and my big race of the year is behind me.  I still have two races ahead of me in 2014, but they’re both for fun, so there’s no pressure on either of them.

 

Total weekly workouts:
Running – 23.6 miles
Run/walk – 1.75 miles
Walking – 3 miles
Lifting – 0 hours
Planks – 12 (longest 2:35)

 

 

  • Questions:
  • What’s your favorite race distance?
  • Where’s your favorite running trail?
  • Who raced this weekend?