fighting the sense of accomplishment.

saturday was sobering.

all last week, after i had my massage, running wasn't as easy as i might have hoped. i don't know if it was because i didn't spend nearly the time on the bike on sunday as i should have, or if the massage helped alleviate even more pain after my peak training week. (perhaps the massage made it worse; i don't know.) but it wasn't easy like i had expected the decreasing distance to be.

to make matters worse, i never committed to saturday's 12 mile run like i should have. in many respects, it was very much like my 14 mile run -- the course was a straight line from start to finish and it was a lot harder than i would have thought. i felt like i had been running forever, and i looked at my watch to see 46 minutes had passes.

so i ended up walking some stretches between 10 miles and the end. i still finished under a 10:00 pace, but i had run the first 7 miles at a 9:00 pace, so i slowed considerably.

to fix this, i got out on the bike for a strong 49:00 minutes, covering about 13 miles. it is not the longest i've gone, but i should be tapering back my cross training at this point, too, and i put a lot of energy into it. in the past, my best weeks have come after a good bike ride on sunday. so expect this week to feel a lot better.

and it should, not only because my mileage decreases drastically this week (21 miles total), but also because i am under two weeks to the race. i think it was a good reality check to have a bad run on saturday, because my biggest concern was feeling too much like i had already accomplished my goal after running 20 miles. and the fear of another run like saturday's will hopefully keep me focused in the last two weeks before the race.

a short 4 miles tomorrow. i will try to go at lunch, as sarah and i may be laying grass seed and mulch tomorrow evening before the sun goes down.

robb.