Put another "X" on the calendar

Summer's on its deathbed.  There is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends.

(For those of you who are not Panic! At the Disco fans, those are lines from one of their songs.)

I'll continue my theme and breakdown this post with those lyrics.

Put another "X" on the calendar
I've been ticking off the miles like clockwork this month. I ran 229 miles in August, which is my second highest month ever. My highest was in March of 2009. It's easy to run high monthly mileage when the month has five weekends for five long runs.

But there was a setback week in August. My right calf started to get really tight during a workout and during the cooldown, every step hurt. At the same time, my high hamstring tendonitis flared up. I've had this injury since March, but it had gotten about 95% better. But after the workout, the pain flared up very noticeably.

The result was that I had to take two unplanned rest days, cut mileage back on another and bail on a 10K race. Interestingly, I was able to run 18 easy miles the day of the race, but I could tell my legs would not have wanted to run fast on hills. Now my calf and my hamstring feel just as good as they did at the beginning of the month, and I am very grateful for that.

July and August training

I'm continuing to love my new training program, and I've had some really great workouts:

• 60-minute steady state run: 7.7 miles at an average pace of 7:47 (faster than MP, slower than tempo)
• 3-2-1 tempo run w/4:00 recoveries: 3 miles at 7:35, 7:35, 7:25 then 2 miles at 7:24, 7:21, then 1 mile at 7:14

Summer's on its deathbed

This summer has been wonderfully mild and I'll be sad to see it go. As much as I have always hated hot weather running, I think I am really starting to embrace it. Proper hydration and heat acclimatization go a long way and I think that I'm much better equipped to handle heat than I was in previous summers, even though it hasn't been as hot.

Interestingly, I opted to do this past weekend's 20-miler on Sunday rather than Saturday. Sunday was noticeably hotter and sunnier than Saturday, but I just wasn't "feeling it" on Saturday. I decided to cut my would-be long run short at 8.7 miles, with the confidence of knowing that I could run a 20-miler in the heat. And not only could I do it, but that I'd be better off in the hotter weather with a little more rest under my belt. The hot, humid, sticky, sunny 20-miler was a success and a huge confidence boost for warm weather running. I paced it properly and my last mile was the fastest and most energized. 

Before I became a runner, summer was always my favorite season and I had a renewed appreciation for it this year after such a brutally cold winter. I always used to say that I prefer running in very cold weather to very hot weather. And while that's still true for racing, I would rather go out in a sports bra and shorts than spend all this extra time with layers of clothing and gloves, hat, hand warmers, etc. 

There is simply nothing worse than knowing how it ends

I was once asked: "If you knew how your races would go before you ran them, would you still want to run them?" It was a good question. In the past, I've had a lot of anxiety about racing because of the uncertainty. I wanted to be able to control how the race went. I didn't like that there were so many things about racing that were unknown and that were beyond my control. And as a result, I found it difficult to relax in the days leading up to a race.

But the more I thought about that question (and my outlook on running in general) the more I realized that a large part of the fun is seeing what happens on race day. You don't know what is going to happen or what time you will get. And that's cool! It's not something to worry about, but rather something to embrace as the excitement of the sport. 

The reason I bring this up now (other than that it fits my lyrical composition of this post) is because I find myself looking at my fall races with excitement instead of anxiety. In less than three weeks I will be running a half marathon and then a full marathon four weeks after that. I'm confident that my physical and mental prep will serve me well no matter what the outcome, so my focus has been primarily on this preparation and not the races themselves.