Home alone

All the preparations were made, breakfast laid out, coffee ready to start, spare gear packed, post run snacks chilling, and even woke up 2 minutes before the 6am alarm. Almost out the door but then decided to check my email and 'Oh, oh, Andrew's cancelling out sick with dizzy spells and general unwellness'. Darn, I hope that flu bug is not catching via email but glad that I double checked.

So, no great rush to get on the road and may as well have another cup of coffee and catch up on bloglines while waiting for the sun to come up. It's been kinda slow in blogland this weekend, either everyone is busy, sick or just not running and posting. Finally around 730 it was time to just do it. I was not particularly looking forward to 20 miles today and the missed opportunity to run with Andrew and Marc made the distance seem that much more daunting. My initial plan was to do a few 5 mile loops around town with pitstops at home for gatorade to break up the run a bit. I'd also loaded up my new ipod shuffle (very cute) with some ZZ Top and Phedippidations podcasts for company (very poor substitute for Andrew & Marc though).

The starting temperature was 3C (38F) with gusty westerly winds and the 1st 5 miles went OK with one quick stop to talk with a friend. On the return leg home I found there was still plenty of juice in the waterbottle and so veered off on the bare grass of our local golf course and then meandered around town again with trips to all the sideroads, cemetaries, trails and parks that could be found. As much as possible I prefer to stay off the pavement when and try to save my legs; that and the fact that it's time for new shoes with my best pair pushing 400 miles (others are at 700 & 800).

Finally after 13 miles I trudged back up my driveway for a refill of gatorade and courage before heading out the highway for the last leg of the journey. By this time the temperature had warmed up slightly to about 5C (43F) but there were still occasional patches of black ice here and there and the wind still remained strong (and it seems always in my face). The pace was quite slow today, likely feeling the effects of yesterday's intervals and also the lack of a fellow pace pusher. The music and podcasts helped keep the mind occupied and finally IT WAS OVER! Man, that seemed like a long way today! 20.1 miles in 2:51 for 8:30 pace including stops. That makes 9x20 mile weekends in a row and we'll be going for 10 next weekend with company this time, right A?

This coming week will be a rest week of sorts as I'm away for work meetings in Dartmouth, NS and it's time for a little recovery before the big push to Boston really begins. The plan is to keep the long run and rest day on Monday but to cut all my other runs by 50% by time. So runs of 30, 45, 30, 60, and 30 minutes are the plan with some strides & intervals thrown in. It will be a little strange running so short as I'll barely get warmed up most days.

Good running and watch out for that flu bug that's going around!