It's been that kind of training week. I actually had a couple good runs in a row. Last Wednesday's run went well and so did my Saturday workout. On Wednesday we did 2 miles warm-up, 6 miles at tempo, and a 2 mile cool down. All my tempo miles were sub-6:30 and I felt relaxed the whole way. On Saturday I had a 20 miler planned and if I was feeling good the plan was to get a few in at marathon pace. We started out at 6am and got in 5 before the full group met at 7am. The first 5 miles were at 8:30 pace - my overall pace for the 20 miles was 7:20. I haven't calculated it out or really analyzed my splits from my Garmin but most of those were around 7:00 pace and we ran very relaxed the whole way. In fact it was the easiest 20 miler I've ever run and I had a ton of confidence in my chances of breaking 3:00 after finishing the run. Fast forward a few days and I was confident that tonights workout would be no problem. The workout called for a 2 mile warm-up, 3 miles at marathon pace, 3 miles at tempo pace, and 2 miles at tempo -15sec. On paper this workout is super tough, but I felt confident that I could handle it. Well it ended up handling me...
The workout started out really well. We got through the marathon pace miles with ease. When we started into the tempo portion things started to go a little downhill. The first mile was a relaxed 6:30 mile but I started cramping up - 2 minutes later and I was searching the trail for a Port-a-John. Luckily I made it to one just in time - they're doing construction on 315 and the nice people of ODOT had one right at the corner of Henderson and 315. I had a hard time getting back on pace after my little pit stop and although I was supposed to be running sub-6:30 pace I couldn't seem to get myself to run marathon pace. It was a long 3 miles to the next restroom on the trail and I pretty much gave up on the workout and focused on making it to the next pit stop.
If these little OFF days were a rarity it wouldn't bother me so much, but they are becoming all too common. I've had some stomach and intestinal issues lately and they are impacting my running all too often. I need to start thinking more about what I eat so that I don't have these problems so often. I've failed to finish several key workouts lately because something I've ate didn't agree with me. I'd really like to have a good workout this weekend at the Homestrech 20 Miler to convince me that these bad workouts haven't set me back too far.
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