Marathon Redemption - Week 5

Ooh baby, don't ya know I suffer,
oh baby, can you hear me moan?
You caught me under false pretenses,
how long before you let me go?

Oooh, you set my soul alight.

Muse - "Supermassive Black Hole"

Week 5 felt like a "Supermassive Black Hole" kind of week. Has anyone out there noticed that what were supposed to be my "weekly" posts (on Sundays) are now getting later, and later, and....later in the week the longer this goes on? Yeah, about that....if I could ever manage to be home and stay home for an entire weekend at a time and have fully functioning internet access at my house for more than 30 minutes in a row (thanks Cox!!) I might be doing better with this weekly posting business. But as they say, better late than never...

Week 5 was completely thrown off schedule because my husband's grandfather passed away and we ended up unexpectedly spending the weekend out of town at a bed and breakfast with his family. His grandfather was, by all accounts, a great and brilliant man, and I'm sorry that I never really got a chance to know him better. By brilliant, I mean really and truly brilliant - the man worked on the Manhattan Project, was friends and colleagues with a number of Nobel Prize winners, and is still very highly regarded for all the work that he did as the head of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Kansas. He was also an accomplished tennis player who played well into the later years of his life, and apparently schooled his students and and one of his daughter's high school boyfriends on the court a time or two. It was great to hear the stories told by my husband's family and his grandfather's colleagues, and I had a wonderful time with the whole family at the bed and breakfast. You really can't imagine a more picturesque bed and breakfast than this, set out in the rolling hills (yes, hills - we do have them here) of the Kansas prairies, with bison grazing just a few hundred feet away from the main lodge. It was even more beautiful thanks to the fact that northeast Kansas had just been blanketed with snow the day before, so everything was sparkling white. Perfect for curling up in front of a big fireplace, which of course the lodge had, with a nice cup of hot tea. Not to mention that the staff of the B&B really outdid themselves with all of our meals...breakfast on our last day was homemade granola, homemade yogurt, fresh fruit, homemade biscuits, homemade gravy, and made from scratch steak and green chili enchiladas that were out of this world. The only drawback to the weekend was that at some point I developed a very severe allergic reaction to something that left me looking a little bit like I had the chicken pox - still not sure what that was about. It's now under control thanks to my doctor, some super-strength antihistamine and a little prednisone, but I'm choosing to blame the Running Chicken for this. Why? Because I can, mostly. Who else could really have given me the running chicken pox??

The hilly setting of the bed and breakfast would be perfect for running, most of the time...but it sure wasn't perfect last weekend, because the dirt/gravel roads had completely turned to sloppy mud thanks to all the snow. Luckily I had managed to do my 16 mile long run on Friday before we left town, and worked in my 6 mile tempo run the following Sunday shortly before the Super Bowl. So, all runs accomplished last week despite the flip-flop in schedule. I was happy that the 16 miles went fairly well. My legs were heavy for most of the run and it was hard, but I ran the hilliest route I could find and managed to keep my legs moving the whole time, and even had enough in me for a little sprint for the last half mile. And I recovered well enough to have an excellent tempo run only two days later.

Week 5 runs:

Run 1: 2 miles easy
Run 2: 16 miles long
Run 3: 6 mile tempo run; 4 miles at 9:15 pace (I was looking for 9:26, so very happy with this - but also wondering why I can't manage to do this in a race when it matters. Meh.)

This week I've already gotten through my easy run and my mile repeats, but you're just going to have to wait to hear how those went! Next up -- 18 miles on Valentine's Day with the Fair Weather Runner!! I'm going to be so happy to run with this girl again, I might not even mind if she talks my ear off the whole darned time. ;-)