A Good Soak

The snow held off but the rain came in torrents with high wind. Marc & I hobbled off into the wind and driving rain for our nightly "supplemental mileage". Marc's main mileage is attained through daily morning runs of 1 hour. My main mileage is attained through every other day morning runs of 2 hours. Three times per week, we run the "supplementals" or "junk miles" to get in the social aspect of running and to continue the build up of those oxygen-carrying blood vessels. We both run our long runs of 20 miles+ over the weekend (usually Sunday mornings). These respective plans are harder to keep than they sound. With me, a nagging pain will keep me from a run to prevent an injury. However, just one day off reduces my weekly mileage by 20 miles. I used to get frustrated by this but I have learned to take the "light" weeks with the "strong". Marc & I were discussing (over the roaring wind) rest days. Marc takes a flexible attitude toward rest days and counts a reduced "recovery run" as an adequate rest session if he is feeling good. I, on the other hand, strictly adhere to the Monday & Friday off. Interesting how we runners naturally adapt our strategies to our needs based on our current knowledge and historical experiences. I know I get nagging pains if I don't take scheduled days off and I also find I have trouble with consistency if I leave too much flexibility in my schedule. I also find that if I need to take a "running" day off due to an injury and that day abuts a rest day, the additional days off really serve me well. Marc keeps a good eye on his log. When the log indicates progressing exhaustion from slower times and less enthusiam, he takes a break. I do intend to reduce my off days to one per week as the mileage nears 100 per week. (I'd have to leave the house at 3am on my "on" days if I didn't.) However, I will try to keep the mileage down on this day to a minimum to give it every essence of a day off. On Wednesdays I run a single session in the afternoon afterwork. Thus, I forego the morning run and I am able to sleep for an additional 2 1/2 hours. This is key as on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my schedule calls for a 4:30am start time which requires a 4am rise. This wouldn't be so bad if I could get to bed earlier the nights before I but just don't. For example, I am sitting here blogging instead of sleeping. Oh well.

In spite of the rain we ran within 5 seconds per mile of yesterday's pace completing the 4.8 mile course in 41:25. At the end, I immediately went back inside the bank (where I work) and changed into dry clothes. No way was I going to drive 30 minutes home in my wet condition. Tomorrow's run will be 2 hours in the AM and the 40 minute session in the PM. I think the weather should be fairly agreeable but I can't recall any particulars just now. Temp's should be near or just below freezing.

Well the lights just went out here and I am operating on battery power so it looks like I will end up publishing this post in the morning as I just realized that DSL needs power due to the modem. Something I didn't know. Dial-up access did not have this limitation. Oops, lights are back. Better post while I can!