PMAD [and 10 Mile Pace Run]

...and today I crawl a few more yards out of my Post-Marathon Affective Disorder following the AT&T Marathon. I suppose that I let that race get to me a little more than usual, and I moped around quite a bit with my running in the months following the race. I was a little bit dinged up, physically, with a groin strain, but I could have run through that a little more if I had really wanted to do so. I sort of let my running self-esteem issues get in the way of returning to Gazelles full-time, and that was not smart. When your main support group for your running is the very group that you are avoiding, then you're just not going to get much better, are you? Anyway, although I kept up the long runs on Saturdays, I was only fitfully running during the weekdays, and that's caused some deterioration in my conditioning. Not a fully terrible thing, but I've got a little work to do to get back up to speed...so to speak.

I came back in the last couple of weeks, and it's been gratifying to see that (a) My running friends noticed that I was missing, and were happy to see me back, and (b) I wasn't as far out of shape as I had thought. Sure, my HR is higher than usual for a given effort level, and my speed is a little off, but I can see that it's only a matter of another month until I'm more or less ready to roll with the old gang.

In the short term, my running goals are to get back in the full training routine, have fun at the upcoming Indy Mini (Half) Marathon the first Saturday in May (sort of a tourist run, depending on weather conditions), and prepare myself for the start of Chicago Marathon training in June. I've already enjoyed these last couple of weeks, back with the peeps, and I'd like to thank Brian and Frank for including me in some workouts lately, which has helped my mental outlook a bunch.

It was cool to follow all of the Boston Gazelles, especially Emily H., Leslie, Rachel, and Shannon, my old training buddies. I am envious of their opportunity to compete in the Super Bowl of marathoning for mere mortal runners, and I hope to be there some day. I'm still holding on to my goal of qualifying as a 50-year 0ld, which suddenly is not that far away!

Okay, today's workout was a pace run around Town Lake with Alex, Brian and Frank. Gilbert had us do 3 easy miles and then 7 at half marathon goal pace. The weather conditions were muggy and 70 degrees, but that was tolerable. My goal was to run the HMGP miles at 8:15 or so, which is about as fast as I'm planning on running at Indy in two weeks. We had some chatter for those first three easy miles, and then it was time to "Go!" Alex took off and was gone almost immediately. Frank was cruising in the silver medal position, and I sort of tagged along in last place, keeping Brian in sight as a pacer.

I was surprised that my first several miles were quicker than my goal, but I was running how I felt, and that's the pace my body delivered. I passed Brian during the second pace mile, as he was having a bad day after a long weekend of travel, and sort of cruised along from there. I grabbed water a couple of times (well, I actually drank the water, as that works better than grabbing it in one's hands...) along the way. It was fun to see Thon and Carrie on the trail this morning, too, around the 4 mile marker. I pretty much held onto pace to Mopac, where I took a slightly extended water stop of about 30 seconds. From there, it was a matter of convincing myself that I really didn't want to walk or slow way down. I found enough people to chase on the trail in those last miles, and salvaged this first extended pace effort.

I ended up with 3 miles of easy preliminary running at about 9:29/mile, not including a rest stop early for us, and then clicked off 7 miles of pace running at about 8:16/mile, including my brief water stops. Overall, I scored 10.25 miles at 8:38/mile, dropping to 8:50/mile including that 2:00 stop early. Altogether, I'll take that. Given that my goals for Indy are loosely defined as trying to get a 1:48:00 (8:15/mile), so that I'm qualified for the Seeded C Corral for 2008, those numbers look okay. Yeah, I'm already formulating a race plan for Indy. :-)

So, I'm back with the program, little by little, and I'm finding that running is really fun again. I'm excited about being a part of the Chicago training group for a change, even though the prospect of training those long runs in the heat of the summer is a bit daunting. The group that is signed up from Gazelles is a fun one, and I look forward to that challenge.