Priorities

Last night and today were much needed reminders that as much as I love racing and training and I try to hold myself to high standards when it comes to these things (and by high standards I mean standards in terms of commitment and effort, not so much performance), the real priorities in my life are not racing and training. It's the summer so I don't have school commitments, but I do have a family and a lover and these people in my life are my priority. And when school starts, school will be another priority. Henry and I had a rough night in a lot of ways last night. I sort of picked a fight with him and he's been going through a rough patch and in the end I think we both needed to just spend some time together, even if it was over the internet, being there to support the other. It meant I didn't get to bed until close to 2 AM. And I had promised Coen a trip to Adventure Bay today, so I had to be mentally present for him. Henry said something that was really important to me last night about this: Being there for my family right now is worth losing 5 or 10 minutes on my race finish time. And he's right. Competing and training is a really selfish thing in a lot of ways because it is such an egocentric activity and takes a lot away from what I can do with my time/energy outside of that. It's important to remember that this isn't the most important part of my life: I've got a lot of other things to prioritize above my training and performance.

So I had actually consented myself to the fact that today was probably going to be a missed workout day, but found some time in the morning to squeeze in a very short easy run. I had a base 4-6 miler planned, but seeing as I was slightly sleep deprived and somewhat stressed and exhausted, I decided to cut myself some slack and just run an easy recovery 5k. It was a nice relaxed way to decompress in the morning before my day got started and I feel very lucky to have been able to get a run in today, however short and slow.

Today's Workout: Easy recovery 5 km.
Summary: 3.15 mi, 34:56, 11:05 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 10:55, 11:03, 11:16, 11:09.
Hit rate: 13/15 (86.7%)

On top of that, today was a fairly active day. Coen and I spent 10 AM to 1:30ish PM at Adventure Bay (climbing stairs for the water slides was pretty rough on my evidently still exhausted legs - may have to adjust training load next week to make sure I'm properly rested before the race). I came home and took a short nap in the afternoon and then spent some time playing one-on-one basketball with Coen in the evening. (He's always beating me at basketball. The scores are close, but it's sort of embarrassing seeing as I'm way taller and way older than him.) It was the right call to keep things short and easy today, glad I made the adjustments as necessary.

I had a long run (10-12 miles) planned for tomorrow, but Coen and I are being taken to a classic car show in the county during the day so I don't know if I'll have the time or energy for it. I might take the day off instead and re-adjust my training plan so I take the long run on Monday and possibly an extra rest day sometime during the week. We'll see how my body is feeling. I think being fresh for the Sunday race is the priority, so I'll do what I have to do to get there.

In other news, I've been taking a look at what I would like to go and the paces are really aggressive and intimidating. I have no baseline to compare this experience to because I wasn't tracking my training very accurately in the lead up to my first and only half marathon (the Philly Half Marathon from the Philly Marathon Weekend; 1:55:37 finish time on a fairly flat course) and I know I took the race out too fast but I also have no sense for how much faster than my usual training pace it was. My goal (ideally) is to go faster than I did in Philly, especially since the Windsor course is way flatter, but I very rarely am able to hit that kind of pace in training. Ideally, I'd like to be under 1:50, but an 8:22-8:23 average pace sounds ridiculous to me. I will stick with the plan of starting out at 9:00 pace and hopefully dropping that down as time goes on, which should at least get me to my old finish time, but we'll see how I'm feeling when I'm (hopefully) rested on race day. I also hope that the smaller scale of the event doesn't cut back too much on the intensity that I'm able to summon up. I know that the size of the crowd and the event was a huge motivator for me throughout the Philly Half, and I don't know that I'll be able to repeat that kind of performance without the energy of that kind of crowd. A lot of factors go into race results, I know that already, so I just have to be prepared to face the music when it happens I guess.

Much love,
Jess