An Extra Sweaty Saturday

One thing that I can always count on during work travel, is that I can’t count on getting all of my workouts in. I always go into the trips full of foolish optimism, as if I haven’t done this approximately once a month for my entire professional life.

I google local pilates studios. I pack like I’m going to be logging mad miles twice a day every day. And I bring my YMCA card, swimsuit, goggles and bike shoes, you know, just in case I decide to come out of triathlon retirement while on the other side of the country.

This most recent trip was pretty par for the course. I over-packed fitness gear but then only logged a few miles every day. I picked wine over the gym every night. And I didn’t touch a single weight for the duration of my visit to Oregon, unless you count my 75 pound, overstuffed carry-on. (Which, for the record, I do. One more cross country trip this month and you’d be smart to avoid running into this girl in a dark alley.)

By the time I got home after spending 14 hours in transit, including a 3 hour layover for drinks with one of my very best friends from growing up, my body was not feeling that awesome.

Layover complete with World’s Largest Apple Strudel Hat, the hottest accessory from 1999.

If you think we look good here, you should see the pictures from the Spice Girls concert. I dressed up as Baby, which makes exactly no sense considering I have brown hair and love all things sporty. I think I chose her because I also love all things food and her signature accessory was a lollipop.

Friday was pretty much a waste of a day. I stumbled through some work, shuffled through some easy miles, and slept through a pilates class. The most productive thing I did with my life was collapsing into bed at 8pm.

11 glorious of sleep later, I was ready to get back on track. With everything. Running, eating food that you can’t find in an airport terminal or a chain restaurant, drinking water and sleeping for more than 2 hours a night. Tough stuff.

First up: my long run.

When I headed out the door, I wasn’t sure I was going to actually follow through on my plan to run long. I was still pretty sluggish and ready to convince myself that distance wasn’t a good plan for the day. For some bizarre reason, fueling with two meals from Starbucks  and sleeping for three hours on an airplane did not adequately prepare me to run double digit miles the next morning. Shocking.

But after a really off week of training, I knew I would not be able to sleep at night if I didn’t get a quality workout in. So I headed straight for an out and back route that wouldn’t let me bail early.

The plan was to run the last 8 miles rotating MGP with a cruising pace.

I spent nearly every one of the first 8 miles out stressing about how hard it would be to hit MGP.

I’ve talked about this before. MANY times. But it’s still something I struggle with all the time. My marathon goal pace sounds terrifyingly fast to me. It used to be my tempo speed. Not even. Much faster than my tempo speed. And now I’m training to hold it for 26.2 miles? My brain just can’t process that. And it’s F-ing scary.

But it’s NOT my tempo pace anymore and it IS a pace I can easily hit for a mile and it’s NOT scary. (If I say this enough times, maybe I will believe it?)

I tried really hard to get my head in this mindset before I set my garmin to start clocking the first mile.

And I think it kind of worked. The first mile beeped in a few seconds under my target speed. And the mile really did feel good. Not easy/easy, not effortless. But not hard. Not legs can barely move/my lungs can’t suck in any more oxygen/COUNT FASTER CLOCK hard kind of effort. Just smooth and steady. And the next three continued to feel so good and so right under pace that I did an extra mile.

18.5 total miles w/5 under MGP. First really good long run of the VCM training cycle-done. I way needed that after a week away from regular training.

I also needed some quality time on the mat (x 2). So I gave my neglected core a little love with a pilates class and then headed to the yoga studio for hot flow yoga.

That’s right. Yoga again. That’s TWICE in one week, people. We are definitely making sweaty history here.

We have matching abs, you just can’t tell because I have a shirt on.

I’d never been to a flow class. Or a hot class. And certainly not a hot flow class, but I really dug it. It wasn’t easy, it definitely wasn’t graceful, but I left class feeling rejuvenated and deliciously stretched out. I am quite sure that I did almost nothing right, but however I did do the poses, really worked for me and got me ready for 10 miles of trail racing this morning (more on that later).