It's Thursday night, and I should be working right now. I don't have another deadline until Oct. 5, but I have another 1000 words due a week after that and will have some other obligations taking up several hours a week of my time starting soon and lasting through the end of the year. And yet I am not, because I am exhausted; and the cause is yet another thing that promises to take up a lot of my time for the next few months: training.
To the experienced runner, my training would not look that strenuous. I'm up to 40 mile weeks after a summer of nothing but EZ and tempo; my long tempo runs, done every other week, are now up to 38 minutes, my long-slow-distance runs up to 14 miles. If it hadn't been so damn hot this summer, I would have done better, and perhaps met my goal of 50-mile weeks and a 45-minute long tempo. But I am pleased with where I am, and prepared to get down to some real work getting ready for the races this fall.
My goals are multifold: to be able to run much better in the races I care about (a sub-22 5k, a half in 1:45 or under, a marathon somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:45), to have the fitness to experiment in less important races, and to glide gracefully across the course in races that I run for charity or just for kicks. I had a time trial of sorts in a 2-mile race on a track in July, and a charity 5k (Race for the Cure) on Sep. 29 that will not serve as a time trial due to the traffic jam at the start and the uncertainty of the (new) course, but will give me an idea of how my body will respond to racing this fall.
Jon Stewart is on, so I'm off. More on this topic later.
