Days 158-170

What an interesting 2 weeks these have been.

The Bad: I spent about a week in a panic about not being ready for the Marathon - despite the fact that it's not until November. The first (and unwise) move that I made in the panic was to find a training plan that dropped my long runs to 8s for much of August. The second thing I did in was to look into the NY Marathon online training programs which were being offered at a discounted price. I started to fill out the information form but even though they say that you get coaching advice from some of their experts - a sample plan was shown based on a few of my previous race times and I wasn't asked what I wanted my goal to be. It just came up with a plan for me and I didn't like that there was no input from me so I didn't enter my credit card information to buy that service.

The Good: The third thing that I did was that I decided to seek out a human coach - not an automated program like the NY Marathon online program. I emailed the coach of the Thursday morning track workouts and asked if he coached marathon runners and he said yes. We spoke on the phone once and have emailed a few times. He is out of town at the moment but I think that I understand his approach and he told me that I couldn't be running 8 mile long-runs so close to my Marathon date. I need to be 14+ on weekends. Also, he said that since my runs with Uli were so slow, I shouldn't count those miles towards my training miles. That makes sense. So today I ran 14 and next weekend I'll do something like 10 on Saturday and 6 on Sunday followed by 16 miles the following weekend. That kind of thing. And I'm running 8 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Mondays and Fridays as rest days. At least I think that's what I'll be doing. My Thursday 8 miles will start off with track workouts and then I'll add more miles until I get to 8. I'll talk with him when he's back in town but he's really nice and he's introduced me to a few others that he trains. I have had a hard time getting back my confidence back and I can't say that I am 100% confidant but I think that I can get there. I feel that I have a plan and as long as I am rigorous and dedicated to the plan, I'll get there.

So, I'll list out my stats for the past 2 weeks but I'll highlight today's 14 miler. First of all, Coach Kees suggested that I meet up with some of the runners for a run at Bear Valley today but I decided to hit Bear Valley on my own today and then make plans to meet up with the runners next time. The reason for that is because they were meeting at 8am this morning, it's about 45 minutes from my home and I've never met any of them so I wanted to figure out where Bear Valley is and what the trails are like on my own before I meet the group there. So that's what I did and it was absolutely gorgeous. On future runs, I'll do a different route because I did a big loop that brought me up up up to about 1100 feet and then dropped back down to the coast. That climb was tough and steep in places so my time was terrible but I sure saw some beautiful sights. It was forested and then I came across a meadow and worried about running into bears (I was in Bear Valley after all) and then I got to the coast and what a beautiful sight it was. It was a gorgeous, warm and sunny day. Just perfect. Photos from today's adventure.

OK here are the stats for my solo runs:
Tues Aug 2: 2 w/Uli and 2 on my own: 2.03 in 21:36 avg 10:37, +310 feet
Wed Aug3: 2 w/Uli and 4 on my own: 4.0 in 41:18 avg 10:19 +369 feet
Fri Aug 5: 2 w/Uli and 3 on my own: 3.01 in 28:32 avg 9:29 +296 feet
Sat Aug 6: 8.0 in 1:30:26 avg 11:17 +1230 feet - open space to Metallica's gate
And then I spoke with Kees, the coach which impacted the next week
Mon Aug 8: 5.0 in 49:58 avg 9:59 +508 feet and Power Yoga
Tues Aug 9: 8.0 in 1:23:38 avg 10:27 and +874 feet (from home to open space)
Wed Aug 10: 2 miles w/Uli and Power Yoga
Thurs Aug 11: 8.0 in 1:23:04 avg 10:22 and +870 feet (home to open space)
Friday Aug 12: Bikram
Saturday Aug 13: 14.0 in 2:46:29 avg 11:53 and +2182 feet