362 and Tour des Fleurs

This is just a post rounding up my training and a recap of this past weekends 20K race. 

Lets start off with the race, shall we?  When I realized Doug and I would be in town again this year for the Tour des Fleurs I did a little happy dance.  We have done this race the past two years and this would make three in a row for us.  It is an awesome race.  It is super well organized and the after party and geedunk are out of this world.  You get an awesome fitting tech tee (there are Men's and Women's cuts and designs) and you get a running hat when you cross the finish line.  Since the party race is to raise money for the Arboretum it has high end food at the after party.  Boy do Doug and I look forward to this race.  There is beer, burritos, gourmet cookies, ice cream sandwich cookies, bagels, pizza, donuts, pasta, etc... you name it it is there.  The band is great too.  This year they even included arts and crafts for the kids to do.  And as if all of that weren't enough you can wander around the Arboretum for free.  It is AWESOME.  Best race I have ever been to hands down.  So any who, we went again this year.  Doug pushed Chloe in the 10K and  I got to run the 20K.  Doug of course did awesome, ran it in 50 minutes, pushing Chloe stopping at every aid station to get her Gatorade.  Don't ask, the dude is fast, trust me I know it is annoying he can run that fast pushing a stroller, I live with him, I get it, annoying, :).  Ok maybe more like admirable, but who is to say, lol.

Lining up for the 20K I stood with Cindy and told her I didn't see how this was possibly going to go well.  I wanted to get a good speed workout but my legs were dead dead dead.  So we started off at a trot and within a few feet my legs remembered it was a race and off they went.  The race felt good.  My 10K time was 50 minutes and my second 10K was 48minutes.  The second half of the course is all hills so I was super happy with that negative split.  I just ran the hills hard knowing that that would benefit my training the most.  I pushed up the hills and tried to let go going down the hills.  I think I could have run quite a bit faster if I had just believed in my legs, I kept thinking I better not go too hard because these sticks are going to bonk.  But ever reliable, my legs just kept on keeping on.  I ended up 4th in my age group by 30s, now that is annoying but, what can you do?  Overall I had a great race and great training run especially considering the miles I had on my legs going into the race.

My training has been nuts.  When I decided to do Heartland I didn't have much time to recoup from Lone Ranger and train for Heartland so I just put together a modified training plan.  This plan had me going 4wks in row on heavy mileage, you all know I never do this.  I am a huge believer in one week off each month to let your legs recover but, I just didn't have time for that.  So the past 4wks have looked something like this: 81 miles, 90 miles (in Albuquerque, hard to get at altitude but some great foothill running), 101 miles (WAHOOOO), and 90 miles (should have hit 100 but my IT band went wonky after the race and had to take Sunday off).  So in the last 4 wks I have put together a solid 362 miles.  I am pretty proud of that.  My legs feel awesome.  My foot is somehow healing during all of this.  I don't have any major injuries and I feel like if I had the time I could actually go well over 100 miles in a week now.  WHAT?? I know.  Two years ago at this point I was working to get 50 miles in a week and now I am using 50 miles as a taper week.  Love how that works out.    I am ready to race again and feeling awesome. 

Speaking of racing it is almost time to meet the crew again.  Wooot Woooot.  It looks like this crew is going to be incredibly diverse.  I have one man in his 70's (my uncle), one pregnant lady (Tracey from Rocky), one insanely peppy lady (Cindy), and two sisters (Marny and Teresa Scarland).  I will begin posting about them in the coming weeks.  I liked the questionnaire from LR so expect something like that this time around too. 

Happy Running Everyone.  Relentless Forward Motion!!!!!!!