Weekly total: 54 miles, plus some long walks in great weather, and general happiness. Gearing up for a tough trail race next weekend — overall, feeling good and ready for increased mileage.
Saturday: 12 miles road. I had to be back home at 7:45am to get the Little Boy to his 8:30am soccer game, yet I wanted to sleep in on my Saturday… result: fast and furious!
Sunday: 14+ miles road + trail. Perfect morning. I could have kept going, but I had to return home for…
3 miles, Orchard House 5K
Mr. P had a long run to complete, and it was a beautiful day and I was in the mood for a race with Little Boy. I choose the Orchard House 5K because it started at noon, so I had the time to complete my afore-mentioned long run, come home, clean up (for the second straight week in a row I arrived home after a long run to find out I could NOT take a shower — this time because the downstairs neighbors accidentally switched off our water heater. Lord.) and take Little Boy to the starting line to register. Also, it benefited the Lousia May Alcott house in Concord, and I was an English Major…
Little Boy started out strong, but quickly fell into a walk. I tried to motivate him to walk/run, but when he ran, he RAN. Sprinted, for about a minute. And then fell into a leisurely walk. Which was fine — the sense I have about this Little Boy is that he’s motivated by a finish line, so an abstract finish line is just not motivating. I tried to encourage him by picking out small goals — “I’ll race you to that tree!” and that worked well.
Then, we neared the finish line. Us 5K runners merged with the 10K runners. We were jogging for a change! There were not a lot of runners on the wide open road, but I moved to the left side out of habit, and Little Boy started to follow me. Suddenly:
“Bawrgggh! Bargggdhhhh! Barrrgggghhhhh!”
A tallish young women wearing a skirt (AND ear phones, I add not insignificantly) ran directly in between us, bawling pure primal sounds at the top of her lungs right in Little Boy’s ear (and my ear, since she ran between us and we were about two feet apart). It was scary and confusing; I couldn’t understand why, when the road was completely empty and wide, she was so intent on running and SCREAMING at us. I figured out later she was doing a respectable but certainly not winning 8:30/m pace. The screaming completely scared Little Boy and stunned us both.
A woman running directly behind the shrieking skirt lady said to me, “I don’t think that was necessary!” as she flew by. Which made me feel good, because the woman in the skirt just struck me as insane, screaming like that in a local road race at a 6 year old child.
We finished the race amid many kind spectators, clapping for Little Boy’s achievements. But he was upset, entirely focused on the woman who was yelling at him. I looked around for her, wanting to casually say something like “That wasn’t cool” without starting a Big Thing but I didn’t see her. What is probably for the better! All I can say is… she’s probably blogging about how she hates when people bring their 6 year olds to run races and they accidentally get in her way. This would never happen in a trail race. Trail runners have etiquette; the world is not their treadmill.
At the finish line -- no, we did not finish 5K in over an hour, but it was close 😉
Three-time Boston Marathon winner Uta Pippig was there! and she was beautiful and gracious as could be!
Hint: Uta is the one on the left
Monday: 6 miles easy.
Tuesday: Interval training, spinning.
Wednesday: 6 miles, some hills. I could feel my quads from yesterday’s never ending wall-sits, which I guess is ultimately a good thing.
Thursday: 8 miles speed work. I headed to the track for one 8-minute mile repeats followed by 800-meter all-out sprints. Another beautiful morning.
Friday: 8 mile mix-up. The mornings are cold and dark. I headed out, throwing on gear to keep me warm in the 40ish-degree temperatures and steady winds. When dawn prevailed, I realized how absurd my outfit was, with its clashing array of colors: fluorescent orange, pink, deep purple compression socks, blue and gray shoes… in other words, I looked like a typical style-oblivious runner, typically found in America.
Cover your eyes
