1. I ran 17 miles this weekend, all by my own self. I am pretty sure that this is the longest solo run I have done to date. Most of my running pals were participating in the Beach to Beacon.
I got set the alarm for 6 a.m. on Saturday. Tony had to cover the Redneck Olympics so we had to be out the door and ready to go by noon. A 6 a.m. wake-up call would have given me plenty of time, right?
And life doesn’t always go according to plan. I got up at 8 a.m. And I didn’t even have much of a plan where I would run — probably the usual route, down College Road into Greene and back. I like it because its got enough traffic to be seen if I were in trouble but not enough traffic to be scary or annoying.
The downside of this route is that a good 3 miles of it is in the direct sun after 8 a.m. I knew that would just be … unpleasant … on Saturday. And I needed every boost I could get to get myself out of the door for this 3-hour, 15 minute run.
I ended up doing 3 out-and-backs on the Whitman Spring Road by Lake Auburn. From where I parked on Summer Street to the end of the Spring Road it was about a 6-mile round trip. It was well shaded all the way until 11 am, and by that point I had the motivation of almost being done.
This is a route that’s foot-traffic only for the later end of it, and not a whole lot of people come and go on that road. So if I had (or met) a problem, that would have been bad news bears. But I felt reasonably safe going late on a Saturday morning; there were plenty of other cyclists and runners out there and it wasn’t a time of day I’d expect the creepies to be out.
Out and backs repeats have been my strategy for long solo runs. They work well because I don’t have to worry about dropping and picking up an aid station (cooler with fresh provisions, sun screen and washcloths). If I do it from my house, I check in with Tony periodically. And it breaks up a long run into little pieces.
The downside is that the terrain, even nice lakeside terrain, gets boring after awhile. I don’t know if I’ll go back to the Spring Road any time soon.
2. Ever since I blogged about how I’ve been gaining weight, I’ve gained more weight. This summer is the opposite of last summer. Last summer I felt like I could eat and eat and eat, and I still lost weight all the way to the marathon. This summer it seems like my weight (and appetite) is going up with my milage.
It was like acknowledging it and writing about it (almost) two weeks ago almost made it worse. First I started getting really conscious of how much I was eating, and I skipped dinner twice last week. That’s not so hard to do, because RIGHT after running I’m not always super hungry, so late workout + early bed time = successful skipped meal, right?
Wrong, because then I’d find myself twice as likely to either a) have a shitty workout the next morning and/or b) binge eat the next day.
I know the secret to successful weight loss is making the little changes in your lifestyle that help you consistently eat within your caloric limits. I’ve blogged about it enough, I know. But its hard to resist the urge to go FULL THROTTLE with a diet right away when you’re motivated and then blow up fabulously.
3. This is a 36 mile week. Oh help me.
Location:Coburn St,Lewiston,United States