Slow

Another weekend flew by as summer is quickly approaching fall. Saturday morning I woke up early and got my 8 laborious miles in. I've finally accepted just how much fitness I've lost since late March when I ran the National Half Marathon. I took it nice and slow on Saturday for my "long" run and it was still a tough slog. Hopefully it'll get better as August and September pass so I'm ready for the Baltimore Half.

By the end of the run, my legs were definitely tired and I knew they'd be sore, but I was happy to find that they never got really sore and felt OK by midway through Sunday. That's good news for my body's ability to recover from the longer distances. My ultimate goal is to continue to increase my mileage past the 13 mile mark to about 15-16 miles for my long runs. That will take me the remainder of the running season (late November or early December).

But, as for Saturday, no real problems. I think my pace will improve as I do more speedwork during the week and get better at it so I get more out of each workout. Speaking of which, I am going to do some tomorrow morning since it's Wednesday. The rest of the week should be speedwork tomorrow, easy recovery run on Thursday, and perhaps a 2 mile fartlek/tempo run with some easy pacing (1 mile) on each side on Friday.

I've decided to go ahead and leave for Shenandoah NP a day early, so will be heading out on Sunday instead of Monday. That means that my long run will have to be on Saturday. In other words, I will finish my week at (hopefully) around 25 miles and then head out to hike 17 miles over the next 4 days. Then I'll be back in Baltimore to get some runs in before the Full Moon Run next Saturday! It'll be a very active vacation, to be sure. I may decide to take next Friday completely off to rest for the Full Moon Run, even though it's not a race (just a fun run in the pitch black of night...) so my body can take 24 hours without running/sprinting/walking/hiking/climbing, actually.