March and The Eastern States 20 miler

Well I had a rough few weeks of training, and was having trouble getting out the door for most of March. I told myself the lay off was so I could enjoy our short winter and get some skiing in, now that we finally had some snow. The truth is it had a lot to do with the DH Jones 10 miler. I ran an ok race, sub 60 for that course isn't too bad, but I thought i'd run faster, I felt like I'd been working hard, and just didn't feel like I was seeing results. I think this dissapointment made it a lot easier to say "awww screw it" when trying to decide to run for most of the month. There were some ski days that I don't regret, but there were lots of missed oppurtunities for running this month.

These training lapses happen to me fairly often and really have been my biggest problem in post collegiate running. Sometimes I just stop caring. For the past couple years I've gotten into decent shape over the summer then just stopped. This is the first year that i've carried my training through the fall and into the winter in a long time. I've been able to keep this lay off to 3 weeks instead of 8 or 9 months, so hopefully I can get back into it before I lose too much. I am frustrated with myself for dropping the ball and that's part of what lead to the horrible decision to run The Eastern States 20 miler.

After the poor month of training I decided to punish myself by jumping into the 20 miler. We were going to go down and cheer on Abbey's mom, but I decided if I was gonna be there I might as well run. I had been getting in about 20-30 a week for most of march, and knew it was probably a bad idea to run, but I wanted to see how it would go. I told Abbey I'd just try to run 7's, that was a lie. I was planning for 6:30's til I blew up. I thought that maybe it would work out and I'd just roll a long for most of the run. turns out I was very wrong, and set myself up for quite the painful run.

I got on the line and said hi to some friends, getting off the line I ran into Fergus Cullen and he was going for about a 2:10, I figured that'd be perfect and planned to go with him. We clicked em off at 6:25-30 for the first 7 miles before i lost Fergus at a water stop. Fergus went on to drop the pace and run 2:04 so I'm glad he dropped me early and didn't focus on 6:30's for me for too long. The race started getting tough around mile 8 I was slowing down a little, and certainly not making any ground on Fergus. I made it through 10 miles at 65:20 and felt ok that I had some time in the bank, but my legs were falling apart quick. I was able to keep it around 7's for the next five miles or so, some over some under. Around mile 15 or 16 Abbey jumped in with me and really kept me going, as I was very close to dropping out at that point. My splits just went to shit here, and I started really dragging. I had to really try to just make it one mile at a time at this point. by the last 2 miles I was barely jogging and almost stopping to walk many times. I think I was running about 9 minute miles by the end of it, but I was able to keep myself jogging and never stopped to walk. I finished the race and that's all there was to it, it was an embarassing last few miles, but hey I did do this for punishment, and I got a whole lot of it.