Convincing My Legs They're Faster Than This

Taking time off from running does funny things to your memory.  And if you're forced to stop when you're in peak condition, like from sickness or injury, it's worse.  Because when you finally get back in the flow of it, you realize your mind kept a snapshot of where you where when running ceased.  And every single day of the "come back", it pushes and pushes and pushes to get to that summit again.

When I got sick in the Spring of this year, I was in pretty good shape.  I was getting ready to race for a half marathon PR in Phoenix, and I was firing on all cylinders and felt like I had a good shot.  But then everything was halted, almost overnight.  Fast forward to now.  Frankly, I'm getting back in pretty good shape again.  Training is going well and I'm relatively injury free.  But something's just not right.  The memory of who I was ... or who I think I was in the Spring keeps whispering to my legs that I'm "not even close".

My splits during my current training indicate that my times are very close to where I am when I'm at my ceiling.  All of my workouts this week were solid and I hit every goal.  I'm still about 3 or 4 pounds on the heavy side of race weight, but other than that I'm eating right and doing plenty of core work. And my clothes are fitting looser like they do when I get near race weight.  Also, I'm mixing in leg strengthening and upper body work after my runs for total body fitness.  All of the ingredients are there, but it just doesn't quite seem like the old days yet.

One of the issues is my splits seem much harder to hit than they used to.  But this might be the most potent example of my mind remembering me better than I actually was.  I ran most of my 18 miler on Saturday at a 7:17/mile average pace, with several of the later miles at or below 7:00.  I've only done that a few other times in my life ... but it just seemed like it should have been easier.  Another thing that keeps bothering me is that I literally don't think I could go sub 20 minutes on a 5K right now.  When I'm primed, that's really not that hard for me.  It's something I can accomplish during a workout.  But I can barely get anywhere near a 6:30 right now.

So who knows.  There's only a few weeks until the marathon now, and while I'm not nervous at all about running a good race, I don't think I can run a Boston Marathon Qualifying time again ... which is the ultimate goal for this race.  I have a peace about it though.  If it happens, that would be cool, but if not, I'm not gonna stress ... I'm just glad to be back in full stride.  Here's a look at my workouts this week.  Hope your training is going well!

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Miles: 64.14
Total time working out with supplementary work: 14 hours, 30 minutes

Sunday: 5 mile recovery run with core work, stairs, light leg workout
Monday: No run ... core work, upper body work
Tuesday: Double run day - 10 miles of speed work in AM followed by leg workout + 6 mile trail run in PM ... Speed work = 12 x 400M repeats (1:25, 1:19, 1:22, 1:22, 1:19, 1:24, 1:21, 1:21, 1:21, 1:20, 1:20, 1:22, 1:20) + 1mi@6:34, 3mi warm up & cool down =10 total
Wednesday: 12 mile easy pace with core & upper body work
Thursday: 12 mile tempo run with 8 miles at tempo pace & 2 cool down and warm up ... 6:41, 6:30, 6:36, 6:34, 6:42, 6:36, 6:31, 6:25
Friday:  No run ... core work, upper body work
Saturday: 18 mile long run, middle 16 miles were at 7:17/mile average pace with following overall splits ... 8:32, 8:03, 7:32, 7:23, 7:42, 7:11, 7:11, 7:13, 7:23, 7:07, 7:26, 7:03, 7:14, 6:47, 6:48, 7:19, 7:11, 8:30