75 Mile Week

I ended up with 75.9 miles this week, my highest weekly total yet. I’m sure someday (soon), I’ll look back and chuckle about 75 miles seeming like a big deal, but right now it does seem like a big deal. It’s exciting. It’s a move in the right direction. And, even though I’m definitely feeling some soreness and fatigue, the mileage didn’t break me. For the first time ever, all 6 of my runs this week were over an hour long, with yesterday’s and today’s both being over two. Doing the back to back long runs is something that I’ll start doing more and more next year, so it was interesting to experience the feeling today.

In commemoration of the milestone, here are the week’s runs written out in more detail than you probably wanted:

Monday: Off.

Tuesday: 9.25 miles in 1:10:38 with Antonio. We were both still sore from Sunday’s 10K, but decided to take an easy run over the Triboro in the morning to work out the kinks. Only, the pedestrian bridge was closed so we had to go down to the Queensboro instead. It was a good run, but I missed my bridge.

Wednesday: 0.92 untimed warmup (Garmin issues), then 10.12 in 1:13:40. I met up with my GMR teammate Jeff in Central Park to run a loop after work. We had a good conversation, but the pace ended up being quite a bit faster than either of us intended. After the loop together, I did another half loop solo, and wasn’t able to relax the pace at all.

Thursday: 9.34 miles in 1:11:12. Again, Antonio and I planned to head to the Triboro in the morning but the pedestrian bridge was up so we ended up doing the Queensboro instead. I had to start super slow at first because of the short rest after the too fast run the night before, but we picked up the pace going over the bridge and finished solid.

Friday: 8.57 miles in 1:04:43. It was after eight o’clock by the time I finally got out for my run. I had overslept and then was at the office all day so couldn’t run at lunch. I came close to skipping this one because of pain in my knee but am very glad I didn’t — It ended up being a phenomenal run. The air was a perfectly still 22 degrees and I rolled through Central Park’s hills without any effort at all. Winter running at its best. I kept the pace in check, knowing that a long run was less than 12 hours away.

Saturday: 20.63 miles in 2:30:53. An amazing run, possibly my best long training run ever. The short rest kept me slow the first few miles, but then I settled into a groove right around 7:20s. I headed down the Hudson to Battery Park, then back up the East River. At 63rd Street, an oil tanker appeared in my field of vision about a half mile in front of me. It was heading the same direction as me and I somehow decided that I needed to race it. It had a decent head start and was going fast, facts that combined to push me to 6:45, 6:24, and 6:40 splits for my last three full miles! It was amazing to have enough left in the tank to do that. And, at the time, it felt almost effortless. This was definitely the easiest 20 miler I’ve ever run in terms of exertion required. I hope it’s a sign of things to come. (Though, after getting back home, I started to feel the effects of the distance full force. A quick nap and some serious stretching got me back to walking almost normally again, but I was still definitely feeling the run last night and into today.)

Sunday (today): 17.02 miles in 2:15:41. I did a nice relaxed loop of Prospect Park with Helen in the rain and then from there back home solo. I was supposed to take the Williamsburg Bridge and the run was supposed to only be 13 miles, but my lack of navigation skills resulted in me running the Manhattan Bridge instead and tacked on an extra four miles. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel tired and sore out there, but it was such a good fatigue that I didn’t mind it at all. The rain was falling steadily the whole time and I just kept plodding along, my mind bouncing from topic to topic.