I’m going to try a new approach to keeping you, my lone reader, up to date on something more boring than watching paint dry on growing grass in a not-yet-boiling pot of water.  During my training for my upcoming race in November I’ll try to write up a “week in training” that gives a run down (pun? of course) of how things went.  So fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna get a little bumpy.

This week kicked off training for San Antonio.  The short version: it was hard.  At least so far.  Leading up to this week I flat out hadn’t run enough.  I think I needed a pre-training training plan.  Without any structure I ran without any regularity or motivation.  It became too easy to say “I’ll just run tomorrow” and sleep in.  I justified not running by distributing my activity to racquetball and some weight lifting.  But it simply boils down to not running enough in preparation, and so this week began a bit shaky.

I’m sticking with the same training plan that got me through Chicago successfully.  That means a fairly aggressive first day of 8 miles, four of which were at half marathon race pace (read: 7:15 min/mile).  Well, that wasn’t happening.  Between the humidity, hills, and out-of-running-shapeness, it was a painful day 1.  But a bad first day means things can only go up, right?

Let’s not mince words.  The second scheduled run was brutal.  Certainly worse than the first day (which really doesn’t seem fair).  Due to an irregular work schedule this week, the morning was unavailable for 9 miles.  The alternative?  Running after work.  July + Texas = Insane Not Ideal.  At 96 degrees and a small water bottle, the stars (and by “stars” I mean “the sun“) aligned for a difficult run.  I got through it.. barely.  But it didn’t kill me, so I guess it made me stronger, or at least I think that’s what they say.

Friday was a gift.  A 4 mile recovery run is about all I’d be physically capable of want to do, and that’s exactly what was prescribed.  Even better, I was scheduled to get to work late, so I got to take my time with this one.  I actually tried to go as slow as reasonably possible, and I tell you this: it was nice.  For all my upcoming recovery runs I’m going to make an effort to exert no effort and run easy.  I need you to hold me to it.

The long run on Saturday said “Mike, you are going to run 12 miles.”  Who am I to argue?  Remember what I said earlier (for all the goldfish reading this: July + Texas = Insane Not Ideal.), and Saturday was certainly still July in Texas.  I went through two full water bottles on this one, and probably would have had a third if I had enough hands (damn you evolution!).  One thing I learned is that starting at 8:30am is too late for anything over 6 miles.  I have a feeling this training plan is going to see an underlying theme of good Mike vs. evil heat.

Overall it was a rough week of training, but looking back I didn’t exactly put myself in the best situation to succeed.  We’ll see how next week goes with more miles and more heat.