Coming around the bend

It's amazing what a difference a new day can bring to your outlook. Yesterday, it was doom and gloom and the body was coming apart at the seams, while today there seemed to be unbounded energy that just appeared from the bright blue sky.

A little background on the sneaky plan I'm on. It slowly adds mileage over the weeks, first building up by maxing out on single runs but then in the 2nd phase it adds double runs on the easy days. The theory, and it seems to work, is that those 2 short 'easy-or else' runs of 4 & 6 miles are less stress on the body than one longer 10 mile run. Another trick is adding miles on the dreaded mid-week medium-long run day by doing a double that day as well.

So this morning it was 4 very slow (or-else) miles on the treadmill followed by a mid-day run of 14 (plan actually said 15 but I misread) for a total of 18 midweek miles. The mid-day run was fantastic, clear blue skies, a bit cold with a light NW wind (windchill -10F) and felt great with some spring in my stride for most of the run. Did stretches before and after and the legs are much improved (just a speed bump in the road to Beantown). The semi-cold is also gone which helps too. A month ago, when looking at a double like this, I thought 'there's no way I can survive that!', but remarkably it was almost easy and I feel great tonite.

Now about this weekend's long tempo run/race in Somesville, Maine which is organized as 2x10mile loops.... My 'plan' calls for 16 with 12@marathon pace, so do I do a warmup, the 10 miler and add a couple of miles at the end or run the 20 with the last 4 'extra' miles at a jog? I'm leaning toward the former as it would be way too easy to get sucked into overdoing it on the 20 and don't really need the extra miles or stress right now.

Meanwhile, I'm hungry all the time lately and need to find something to eat. The cobbler is history but we always have ice cream in this house. Mmmm food!