End of June update

I continue to train for the Chicago Marathon. Training has gone fairly well, with the possible exception of last week. It was a low-mileage week (49). I made it an even lower mileage week (39.5), plus I ate like shit. So any hope of being at race weight by the end of this month...won't happen. Fine. Not gonna get bent out of shape over that, no pun intended. As for the running itself, I often find I have this issue when I get an easy week. Extra time on my hands = getting comfortable = getting lazy. So I'm happy that the week is over and I can get back to running some more significant miles.

On June 6th, I ran a local 5K. It was going to be my first attempt to break 19:00 at the 5K distance. But a late night out with friends the night before, alcohol included, prevented me from really going all out. I felt OK, just not like I was peaked for cranking out 100%. So I turned it into my speed workout for the week, and ran it as a 5K tempo run. Finished comfortably in 21:27 (6:45/m). No idea what place I finished in.

On June 13th, I ran my first trail race. It was a 3.4 mile run at French Park, here in Cincinnati. It was not an easy run. It's remarkable how much harder these races are, but I had a lot of fun. Course consisted of two, alternating downhill/uphill sections, and 5 creek crossings. Ridiculously humid that morning. Only disturbing thing was during my warmup, I had a sudden pain in my left knee that wouldn't seem to go away as I continued preparing for the race. So I dialed it down a notch during the race, but not much. Finished in 28:08, good enough for 30/134 overall, 27/87 among the men. No complaints for my first time running one of these. Not a fast average pace, but there was no doubt that I was working hard. I was huffing & puffing pretty good at the end, which ended with a big uphill as we came out of the forest and hit the 200 yard straightaway to the finish.

One of the things that has hurt my training is the World Cup. I'm a soccer fanatic, and so getting up early to run hasn't been happening because I've been waking up early to watch soccer. And with group play going from 7:30AM to 4:30 PM, I've been squeezing in my running either from noon-2:30 b/w games 2 and 3, or at night. And all that time on the couch watching TV leads to eating. And that's why I won't be at race weight by June. Well, that and my wife's and my recent quest to find the best burger in Cincinnati. =)

The actual plan I'm following, I really like. The flexibility has been great, and that's exactly what I was hoping for. First few weeks, there haven't been any real "long runs", just a lot of 7-15 milers, with some tempo and interval runs thrown into the mix. The longer runs will be coming up soon though. I'm actually looking forward to them.

What's next? July heat, about 271 miles of running, a week's vacation in N. Myrtle Beach the last week of July, at least one 5K (7/4) and another trail race (7/18). Sounds like fun to me.