Saturday, September 29, 2007

Elephantiasis

How much slower does sitting on one's ass for 11 days (punctuated by a triathlon in the middle) make a person?

A lot, apparently.

I could only manage 10km today, in what was supposed to be a long run day. With a walk break in the middle.


I felt like a lumbering elephant. A stiff and sore and cranky lumbering elephant.

At a pace (11:42 min/mile) that will only buy me a 5:07 marathon on race day even if I could keep it up for 26.2 miles, which I doubt.

It may be time to start revising my MCM pace plan downwards. 5:07 would still be a huge PR, but I really would like to break 5 hours. But it may be much too late for that.

Oh well. At least my 10km was about 10 minutes faster, with an average heart rate 14 bpm lower, than I was able to run last Sunday. (Then again, it was 15 degrees cooler today, and I hadn't had the fun of a 1500m swim and a 36-mile bike to warm up with).

4 comments:

Spokane Al said...

Well, if you had to sit, at least you were able to do it in style as you cruised the highways and byways up and down the eastern seaboard.

That ought to be worth something.

Old and Slow said...

sitting on ones ass for a few days can be a good thing. I would urge you to defer judgement on your goals until you get a couple of more runs under your belt -- you may have just been knocking the rust off.

UltraMamaC said...

ahem. The aborted long run days that lead to huge reductions in mileage -- I prefer to call those "cutback weeks." Brings an air of legitimacy to sitting on my arse all week, despite what the schedule says. I'm doing it for my overall well-being, see. your day sounds like what did today -- 14 scheduled, 6 actually accomplished, and on the TM even! sound familiar??) right there with ya, girl!

Brent Buckner said...

Some of it's recovery, surely....