Running over the past 10 days has been far from a walk in the park and I am hoping it is just because I am in desperate need of some R & R and I will feel the bounce back in my feet when I return from vacation. Here's hoping.
After my hard run on Thursday of last week, I ran an easy 3 miles on Friday morning and then headed up to North Conway, New Hampshire for a weekend of winter mountaineering with my dad. We signed up for a two day course through the Appalachian Mountain Club. My dad and I were thinking that we could get comfortable walking around in crampons and using our ice axes for the climb we are doing on Mount Rainer this summer. The guides for the course were from the well renowned International Mountain Climbing School and they were great! On Saturday we spent most of the day on the base of a rock wall working on walking in deep snow on steep terrain in our crampons and walking on steep ice. Then we progressed into sliding down the snow and practicing stopping ourselves with our ice axes. We essentially were playing in the snow in 50 degree weather for most of the day. It was great! At the end of the day we got a taste of ice climbing.
On Sunday we spent the entire day ice climbing. I had never done any other climbing than rock climbing and I thought I would be more nervous on the ice. Surprisingly I felt great and really enjoyed it. By the end of the day my arms were killing me from using ice picks as my hands to climb the ice.
We came back from New Hampshire on Sunday night and I headed straight to bed. The whole spring ahead thing is hard to adapt to. Monday morning I somehow convinced Aimee that the weather was not too bad for an early morning (7AM) run. When I checked outside at 6:30AM it seemed to only be drizzling so I saw no problem in sticking to our already scheduled pre-work run. The weather quickly detiorated within the first couple miles of our run and by the end we were being pelted in the eyes with huge snow flakes! It was quite the treacherous run but all I could think was that you practice what you play in. If it were snowing on marathon day we wouldn't stay in and call it a day. So, I like to think that Aimee and I are now that much more prepared for whatever weather is thrown at us for the Boston Marathon.
Last night's workout (on the track with Jack) was what really killed me and was a bit of a bruise to the ego. As per usual, I woke up early and did my 1.5 hour swim in the morning. It was a pretty hard workout, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I tried to stay well fed and hydrated throughout the day in preparation for our track workout. Betsy was feeling under the weather so she had to stay in and I trekked over to Tufts on my own. The workout called for 8 x [1000m fast, 200 recovery, 200 fast, 400 recovery]. Jack said that people not doing the Bedford half this weekend only had to do 5. (I don't' think I fall into that category seeing as on Sunday I will be sitting on a boat, sun bathing). Regardless, I could hardly pull out five of those sprints without feeling really really tired, and like I had to work overly hard to make it through the sprint. I tried to coach myself through them but I just could not keep up with the crowd. I decided to just do five and then I ran 3 miles separately around the track to make up the distance.
Today I am taking the day off in hopes of having a good rest before my 20 miler that I plan to do tomorrow AM.
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