Road Racing and Training Thread - Week Ending 9/1

Charlie Freak - welcome to the thread! You have some great goals and I see you have already gotten some sound advice. I bet it felt great to let loose like that in your 5k for the first time in a long time.

Diesel - nice to hear you got a comfortable run in. And congrats on the continued weight loss. Sounds like things are falling into place for you.

NP1112 - you have a rather interesting notion of staying motivated. :) Sounds like life is treating you well - good for you.

cmm268 - thanks for your continued support. It's great to hear positive encouragement from the likes of you and TheGarbageDisposal, especially since you guys have already broken through the level for which I am shooting.

My bib # for Philly is 1141. I'll be in corral #1. Shoot me an email if you want to meet up. Would be great to say hello.

Ca$hclay - I think we are ALL ready for summer to end. High humidity is definitely no fun.

Stone Cutter Thanks for keeping this thread up and running this summer. Excellent 5K in the soup. Sounds like the hay is in the barn and you are ready. Nothing left to do but taper, taper, taper!

forcerun Another solid week.

hobbyjog Sub 3 well within your grasp.

Slartzio Nice week of training.

Lopare Congrats on the PR

VF Runner School is a parent's best friend sometimes!

MS93 That's a pretty sick week! Good luck with the 10K

Renewed Marathoner I would like nothing more than to head up to a cabin in the mountains with just my fishing pole and running shoes for a month or two. Jealous of your summer and would imagine you are in great shape.

Screams You will ultimately take more + away from the DNF than -. Lesson learned for sure, but sometimes we have to get right up in it to learn from it.

NJ truth Great week. Love the 1/4s and the 5k - 16:08 on dead legs. Ahhh, youth.

Charlie Freak Welcome to the thread and welcome back to racing after the long layoff.

Stone Cutter- Another solid week and hope the 5k went well! Edit note: Just saw the 2nd post, nice run!

Forcerunner- Very nice combination of quality/quantity. Two very impressive workouts this week.

King Hobbyjogger- I echo the sentiments of others on here that your "Gold" goal is more than realistic.

Slartzio- You've really been stringing together some solid and consistent training lately.

Lopare- Nice workout/run on Wednesday and take care of that ankle! Some down time (or easy days) now to take care of it is better than losing months of training. (I just have to look in the mirror to remind myself of that... sigh)

Printer- Impressive that you are squeezing in that type of week quality/quantity wise even in the midst of your move. Speaking of which, good luck with that!

VF Runner- Similar to the comment I had for Printer, very impressed you are keeping up with all the training in the midts of all you got going on.

MS93- Very impressive week and good luck with your half this weekend!

Napper- Training looks good and hope the knee issue clears up for you soon. Wish I could join you and NP1112 for the Chicago half this weekend. The weather is usually decent but can be a bit windy either from miles 3-8 or 8-13. (it's about 5 miles out-and-back for the last 10 miles) so tuck in with a pack if you can. Good luck!

Renewed marathoner- Nice job getting in what you can with everything else you have going on. Sounds like you have been living quite the life the last few weeks!

Muebele- Sorry for the rough week but it sounds like you took what your body gave you on each day/workout and didn't overextend, which is the smart but hard thing to do for all of us. Hope you bounce back this week.

elif- Training looking good. Any tune-up races planned?

xenoscreams- We've all been there, sometimes DNFing is the right thing to do. (allows you to recover/bounce back quicker, etc...) You know your body best by this point and every one on this board knows how dedicated you are to your training. Hope you've recovered well.

NJ Truth- You've really been knocking out your workouts lately man! Where are you racing in 2-3 weeks?

(or is it a secret :))

Charlie freak- Welcome and it looks like you are in pretty good shape. Looking forward to seeing how your training progresses.

Diesel- Nice work and impressive job on the weight loss. Hope to be following your lead in that area soon.

CMM268- Sorry to hear about the injuries man and I more than empathize. I'll give my 2 cents on the Chicago/Savanah situation though since I was just in that spot this spring. If I really wanted to run a marathon PR this spring and the one marathon I already signed up for wasn't Boston, I would've skipped Boston (or used it as a long run) and then went after a early/mid-May marathon. So I would go with your plan of targeting Savannah. Although I might not even sign up for Savannah yet until you really know you are out of the woods. (there are a bunch of marathons that are a few weeks later... Philadelphia and CIM comes to mind)

Ca$hclay Pretty good week. I like how you seem to be training on the same surfaces/terrain (trails/hilly?) that your goal race will be on.Keep up the good work.

Hi guys. I'm going to comment, but first, a follow-up. After beating myself up for a little less than a day, I remembered that bounce back is one of the qualities of the elite athlete which is what I aspire to be, so I stopped pitying myself and started thinking about the next season. There are two main things I gained from the experience:

1. I really appreciate my break right now. I normally short breaks, but I'm being really good about it this time around and taking it very seriously.

2. I've already encountered the worst case scenario! When I go into a race and I think "what's the worst thing that can happen," really it's what happened on Monday. And I made it through that and I still want to be an elite marathoner and run the B standard eventually and nobody thinks any less of me. So I have nothing to be afraid of.

My coach wrote probably the nicest paragraph ever in his email back to me. It really made me smile, so much that at the risk of him learning my LetsRun identity if he doesn't already know it, I find it worth it to share what he wrote:

"I hope you can use this to gain perspective. It is an easy trap to take your identity from your time in some race. Please don't do that. You are so much more than that. More than a simple time, so much more than just a distance runner. It can be part of your strength, but it should never become the whole thing. It's disappointing and frustrating to be sure, but you just have to continue to look at the big picture and move on. Easy for me to say! :)"

On to comments!

The Stone Cutter: Closing in! You've got this. Stay sane when you start tapering, and I can't wait to hear how everything goes.

King hobbyjogger: Very nice week. I'd like to note that no matter how many times I've told myself "I'll just run that race as a tempo" I've never managed to actually do it. Once I get out there I just get so hungry.

Slartzio: Interested in seeing how the quality long runs go for you in the long run (cringeworthy unintentional pun). They seem to be a big thing these days :)

löpare: Very nice race.

printer: Yay Boston. I wonder how many people ITT will be doing it. If my sister and boyfriend both get in, I want to go run the B.A.A. 5K and then cheer them on the next day.

MS93: Very strong week!

napper: Good luck Sunday!

NJ truth: Great week and super consistent workout.

I appreciate all of the kind comments that helped me work through those few hours of self-loathing and self-pity.