100 days to Boston.
Scrolling through Instagram last Saturday, that realization hit me like a bucket of ice water.
The last couple days had me piecing myself together following a week stuck in bed with whatever the hell this virus that had been going around. Speaking of a bucket of ice water? Well’s hows about a real feel of 16° for my run back after a week in Phoenix. Maybe it was the prior days of fighting off a burning fever but man was that first run shocking.
5 miles at 8:34 pace, slipping and sliding on ice as I battled a cough that just wouldn’t quit. The first run back following a couple unplanned “rest days” is something not unfamiliar with me.
Testing testing, is this thing on?
That first one is just checking in. Outside of sickness, my IT-Band/knee had been a lingering issue from before I went on vacation. Cold and limiting movement from long tights seemed to aggravate the problem. Toss in some ice and hard snow? Well, talk about a recipe for a setback. So this first one was as cautious as I needed to be. Run club provides that opportunity. Running solo is too much temptation to get away from control, especially if I’m in conditions I’d rather not be in. A pack just takin’ it easy and chattin’ makes me not worry too much about the time on feet.
Result? A little rusty from lack of movement but we should be back to consistency fairly quickly.
While the result of the first run back was solid, there continued to be a lingering voice in the back of my head to get back immediately to the milage I had been doing. But I knew that a couple more days doing “just enough” was necessary to survey any potential damage that a 5 mile run wouldn’t tell me. If that meant scrapping the long run for the week and just 7-9ish miles easy, so be it.
The reality of race day looming triggered a feeling I hadn’t felt since college. I was running out of time here. Before I knew it, it would be March and I’d be lining up for Project 13.1. While others are knocking out good long runs, I was out here trotting and not getting any work done.
I started to look at old training logs from 2023/24 to see what kind of mileage I had been at. I basically wanted to see what kind of hole I was in. To my surprise, I was at about 60ish for the week ahead of me in the last two years. That was a relief for me until I dug deeper into 2023. That 60 was a down week after I ran 8:33 for 3k and had been stacking 70 mile weeks. Welp. Not ideal.
These unplanned rest days present a mental challenge. It’s fairly easy to head down a spiral that leads to you feeling like your back is against the wall and you need to claw at any sort of fitness to get yourself back on track. Years of setbacks has taught me that sort of thought process is what inevitably leads to you being back on the shelf again. I just need to remind myself, I’ll be back to it quicker than I think I will be at this current moment. It’s not a mountain to climb, it’s just a little hill to stay composed through.
I was in the best shape of my life in that NYC Block, it’s there. I know it’s there. Time’s a tickin’ but I’m confident that in less than 100 days I’ll be ready to get after it. I just need to make sure I don’t get in my own way.
Beers and Miles 