Recovering

Woot - man I love marathons. I just got done watching the elite races for the New York City Marathon and am arm chair cheering for my friend Tim, who is toeing the line. Very exciting races out there - some great triumphs and some big heartbreaks.

Take for example Mary Keitany. She put it all out there today to take a disappointing third. But what an amazing race she had and what guts it must have taken to break away from the get-go and go for it. No matter what your relative speed is, when you give it your all, you are likely to have triumph or disappointment. There is little room in between.

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As far as my running goes, it has been for the most part, non-existant, but fun. I ran our practice 5K with my Girls on the Run last Monday, which was so awesome. My running buddy wanted to make the whole 5K without any walking breaks. It got hard around mile 2.5, but she did it! Woot! And she ran faster than last season. I was so proud of her and all of the girls who did awesome. It was so inspiring to see. Then, last Saturday, I ran the Haunted Hustle Half Marathon. I did not race it, but I did push the pace some. I finished in 1:46 and change and had a total blast. It was really fun to run a race with absolutely no pressure on myself. And I have to admit that it was fun near the end when I was able to readily blow away a couple of women who were jockeying to take me. Heh. (Terrible, I know).

It was funny though because when I got home, the boys asked if I ran the half or the full and responded as though I was a slacker when I said the half. Needless to say, my nephew who had spent the night was a little surprised.

Since then, I have not run a single mile. Seriously. I took Sunday and Monday off to rest and by Tuesday I was slammed with a nasty head cold. I mean slammed too. I went to bed early every night and slept in every day, but by Friday I was toast. I was in bed by 7:00 pm and did not get moving on Saturday until 11:00 am. Crazy. But I guess my body needed a reset.

I am hoping to run later today, but we'll see what happens. I have a ton of things to do (now that I spent all morning tracking NYCM) and am still not feeling great. One of my missions on tap is to come up with a pre-Wisconsin marathon training schedule. I do better if I have something lined up and I am toying with something different - speed work/hills? I don't know yet. I still have some time to recover from Grand Rapids, but will come up with something soon.

Happy extra hour day. Hope you enjoyed yours!

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Edited to add: For those of you wondering, yes, I was planning on racing a half this weekend. I decided to bag that idea for a couple reasons. The number one reason was that I was crazy sick. But I also decided to because the course is notoriously hard and I had a bad race there last time I did it - the last thing I need right now mentally is another crappy race. So my focus now is on recovery, maintenance, and then moving into a new season. This one is over.