Week 6 MyASICS Half Marathon Training

First a hello from Miami, FL. If you’re wondering if I’m ever in NY, the answer apparently is no. Ben and I came back from Hawaii, stayed home for 5 days, then flew to Fort Lauderdale/Miami for the Miami Half Marathon. Our original plan was to fly back Monday afternoon, but when we heard about Juno rolling in, we got a jump on changing our flights. To make a long boring story short, Ben managed to snag the last available seat on the last United flight from Fort Lauderdale to Newark. That’s right, he abandoned me in Florida.

While driving to the airport Monday morning, we were unsure what was going to happen. I can’t remember what Ben said exactly, but he described what the worst possible outcome was. I disagreed, “The worst possible outcome is that you fly home, I’m left alone with no car and no hotel.” Well, I found myself in that situation. Ben tried to reason with me (while I was having fun feeling sorry for myself) and asked, “Before you met me, what would you have done if you found yourself in this situation?”

“Find myself another boyfriend,” I answered. Ben sighed and shook his head. A few moments later, I brightened up and remembered that my friend H. was still in Miami until the next day. “I’ll call H. She’ll save me.” I happily stated. After Ben’s flight took off, I called H. and as I knew she would, she picked me up at the airport and provided me with housing at her parents’ for the night that she was still there. Ben and I spent the entire Monday afternoon trying to secure a good return flight and then later housing. Ben did good and arranged for me to get switched onto a direct afternoon flight back home from Miami and found a good cheap AirBnB room in Little Havana, Miami.

In return, I made good on my threat to find another boyfriend. I had arrived absurdly to the shared house because H. was flying out at 6:30 in the morning. I took a train down from Fort Lauderdale to Miami and arrived at the house at 7 am. The other guests were up and starting their day, so I was able to go in and hang out in the common areas – living room and kitchen – until my room was ready at 1 pm. One of the guests I met was Filipe, an engineer from Brazil. I was sitting in kitchen wondering how I could make myself some coffee, when he came in and introduced himself. He offered to brew some coffee for us. After sipping the coffee he made, he decided it wasn’t up to his standard and insisted that we go out for a proper cup of coffee at a cafe. We went to Panther Coffee, a trendy cafe in Wynwood. We both had coffee and croissants (the almond croissant was delectable!). Then he drove us back to the house. For a couple hours I quietly worked in the living room, while he packed (he was leaving later that day). When he was done, he asked me to go to lunch with him. First a coffee date and now a lunch date. My, my, aren’t we moving fast? *wink* I found a cool hipsterish Cuban sandwich specialty shop called Little Bread. I ordered the traditional Cuban, which was fabulous. I could tell that the sandwich was made with high quality ingredients. My favorite part of the sandwich was the bright fresh taste of the pickles, which nicely cut through the fatty taste of meats and cheese. The size of the sandwich was huge and very filling. Filipe liked his sandwich too. I told Ben all about my “date” with Filipe, just to let him know that I always had options.

That’s what I’ve been up to during the last 36 hours.

As for my training . . .

People have commented that I did a good job of training while on vacation. Honestly, I usually find that it’s easier for me to train while on vacation, as long as we’re not on a strict schedule. With everything that’s going on with work, wedding planning, and home renovation (although Ben might mutter, “What renovation?” because it’s been slow going), it’s hard for me to find time and/or I’m too fatigued to run. I know there are people out there who are willing to sacrifice sleep in order to get the miles in. I’m not one of them. My health means everything to me and if I consistently shortchange myself on sleep, I’m chronically ill for months. So if the choice is sleep or running, I’ll pick sleep 99% of the time.

Last week, MyASICS asked me to do:

Monday: 5.5 miles (8:08 – 8:29 pace)
Thursday: 3 miles (10:45 pace)
Saturday: 5.5 miles (8:06-8:29 pace)

Instead I did:
Tuesday: 3 miles (8:56 pace on treadmill) – Monday I was too overcome with jet lag to do anything. I napped, ate, played on the internet, and napped some more while getting lots of snuggle time with Bandit. Tuesday, I had good intentions of trying to do 5.5 miles at the prescribed pace, but I quickly realized that my legs had nothing in them. So I quickly decided to do swap Thursday’s easy job instead and the intended 5.5 miles.

Thursday: I was too tired to run before work and the last thing I wanted to do when I came back home was to go run. I decided that if I felt ambitious I could try on Friday.

Friday: I was not feeling ambitious.

Saturday: We flew to Miami.

Sunday: I ran 13.1 miles. Not because I was feeling ambitious, but because I was running the Miami Half Marathon. I’ll write a race report about this, but briefly, Sunday was not my finest day. My legs felt completely dead and I finished it in 2:07:58. To put this in context, I’ve ran half marathons where I was sick, couldn’t breathe well because of bronchitis, in grueling heat, or recovering from a long illness and those times were faster than what I had done on Sunday.

While the total mileage was more than what the plan asked for, I really didn’t follow what the plan asked for very well last week. It was definitely an off week. I think this is now the point where I wail about how an off week shook my confidence. In reality, it didn’t. I was fatigued, from both the long air travel from Hawaii and  the fact that the last three weeks the weekly mileage was far higher than what I normally run (around 20 miles per week). If you think that 20 miles/week isn’t all that much, I agree with you, but normally I run under 10 miles/week. I peak at 20 miles/week. So three weeks of about 20 miles/week is a lot for my poor legs who aren’t used to it.

I took two full days off and hopefully I’ll get a run in tomorrow morning. While last week, I wasn’t excited by the prospect of running, I am excited at the thought of running tomorrow. I’m ready to pick up my training again.

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Anyone else go out with a stranger of the opposite sex when you’re traveling by yourself? And is your partner cool with it?