The interruption of life

I figured that blogging would take a back seat as my life resumed... "life" meaning work.  As a teacher, I have the luxury of summers off ("off" of course is a relative term... I am "off" from taking care of other people's children, but instead spend the day with my own).  While my summers are far from relaxing, I don't have to wake up at 5:30 AM (unless I want to run, of course!), I get to chill for a couple of hours while the twins nap each day, and most importantly, I don't have to write lesson plans or grade papers!  This is why I started to blog... I simply had the time to do so.  We went back to school on Monday, thus I had zero time to blog this week. I imagine I will have to simply start doing "weekly recaps" instead of daily blogs, at least until winter break ;)

I have a race on Sunday!  It sort of snuck up on me. With getting ready to start back to work, and then actually starting back, I haven't had the time to think about the race much at all.  I am running a quarter-marathon (6.55 miles), and wanted to do a mini-taper this week.  Meaning no tempo run, no real speed work or anything.  So here is what this week looked like:

Monday: cross-train (arms workout, plus 60 pushups done in sets of 30-20-10)

Tuesday: rest

Wednesday: 4 miles easy after Char's dance class (7:15 PM).  This one hurt more than it should have.  I kept my pace easy, but I just felt blah during the run.  It was my students' first day back, and I wore 4" heels all day long.  OUCH.  I am chalking the ickiness of this run up to that.  Splits were 10:15, 10:00, 9:52, and 9:50 (39:58). 

Thursday: rest

Friday: 2 miles easy (20:48).  I woke up at 5 AM this morning to get in a run.  I had planned on just cross-training today, and not running at all until my race on Sunday morning, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought a run made sense.  Not running at all for over 3 days didn't sound like a good plan.  It went better than Wednesday.  Still didn't feel spectacular, but I was able to do a quarter-mile pick-up at the end (down to around my 10K pace), and then I did a couple 30-yard strides, just to kick it in a bit.  

The plan is to rest tomorrow (may fit in an arm or a core workout, but we have yet another busy day, so that may not happen), and then race on Sunday morning, bright and early (race start is at 7 AM).

Goals... I have gone over these in my head several times.  I *should* be able to hold around an 8:15-8:20/mile pace, based on my 5K time from last month.  That pace seems unbelievably fast to me.  That would be a sub-55 race, which would be... wow.  Fast.  

So my C goal (the one I really should accomplish, based on my times and training) is a sub-1 hour.  That's a 9:09/mile pace.  Considering I did my half in 2 hours and 50 seconds, going under an hour should not be a problem.

My B goal (the one I really think I can do, if I work hard) is a sub-57.  That would be an 8:41/mile pace.  Quite a bit faster than my C goal, but definitely a do-able goal.  

And my A goal?  The one where I just might cry if I get there?  A sub-55.  I find it hard to believe that I can run that fast, but heck, it's worth a shot!