Made Up My Mind

Wednesday I had my usual chiropractic appointment. My chiropractor didn't find anything unusual with me, my Q angle was off but other than that, it was all the usual adjustments. I talked to him about how I was training and that it's different this year. Last year (and years prior) I ran all my distances close to or at marathon pace, whether if it were 2 miles or 20 miles. Perhaps the 2 milers were a little faster, but not my much. This year we're backing off the distance in our taper but we're also doing more speed work at the Tuesday night workouts. It's beating me up. Blogger Jeremy (Keeping It Surreal) sort of reaffirmed what I'm going through in a swimming analogy he had, since that's what he knows:

"I know for swimming that our workouts were a lot more grueling than the other races. Also before a championship meet we would start a taper about 4 weeks before the meet which was a reduced amount of yardage to give our muscles time to rest and repair which had the effect of making us go faster. Not sure if that helps but the different style and "stop and go" parts of your track workout maybe something you're not used to in longer runs and therefore you might be adjusting your stride differently for relatively shorter distances versus the longer runs? Again just putting out my swimming analogy :)"

When you go from longer distances at a slower pace to shorter distances doing speed training, it can beat you up if you're not used to it. The mechanics of how I run changes when I go faster. I'm still feeling beat up. I'm not sure if I'm going to do the 16 miler this Saturday. I'll wait and see.

It's now exactly one month until the marathon.

I've decided not to go with TNT to run in the Nike Women's Half Marathon. There were many reasons, but the big reason was the fundraising. The corporate folks I was thinking about talking to are having problems raising funds for their own charities this year, plus everyone is cutting back on their charitable donations this year. HOWEVER, I do think it is a good cause, and I am going to give my support to Juls (Keeping Pace) in her TNT endeavour for the Nike event.

Yesterday's song:
Ready Made - Beck