6 days until Healdsburg, and my training has been...

Posted by Rachel

...variable. In my last update, I mentioned that I suffered a minor groin strain at a swim meet 2 weeks ago. Luckily it was just that - minor. I ended up not running (and not biking or really swimming either) for about 4 days to let it heal, and then it was fine for running. The longest effect was that I couldn't do breaststroke for almost 2 weeks - oh darn. Even that's fine now though. By the way, this is what resting an injury looks like in our house:

I hope this doesn't surprise anyone.

Then last weekend my sister came to visit. Usually two weeks out from a half I prefer to do a run that is longer than the half distance to make sure my endurance is all good. But with my sister here, I just couldn't be bothered.

We had better things to do like going to Sonoma. 

And canoeing on Lake Merritt (followed by a milkshake from Trueburger, because obviously canoeing burns at least 800 calories). 

Then this week (I thought) I was going to get a really solid week of running in. Tuesday I had a pretty solid track workout, and a fine recovery run Wednesday. Normally I would've followed this with a tempo on Thursday, but instead my wonderful aunt treated me to a wine-food pairing at Mourad in SF (Moroccan) - my second experience at a restaurant with a Michelin star, theirs earned recently. Thanks for the early birthday present, Becky! :) 

Food was AMAZING. But I may have accidentally drank WAY too much wine. 

I decided to skip Friday morning masters swim practice, but was surprised when I woke up and didn't feel that bad! Not to mention, sunrise over Lake Merritt was awesome!

It was much more colorful in real life

Unfortunately, as the day went on I still didn't feel that great. Turns out I'm not in my 20s anymore. Which maybe explains that when I went out to do a 7 mile run with 5 @ tempo pace that evening, I shortened it 6 with 4 @ tempo and almost died of asphyxiation. Not a good run.

In order to recover, I allowed myself to sleep 11 hours that night. Turns out I hadn't slept in for over a month! Then I did a hilly 10 miler Saturday in 8:24 pace the day after nearly dying in a tempo, which was a surprisingly good pace given the effort. Then on Sunday I did a short easy 4 to recover but my legs actually felt great anyway. So hopefully this is a good sign for the half (?) . With all my extra time this weekend, I also decided to cook a lot.

Some hearty Italian cooking- (braised) pork ragu with polenta and pumpkin pies. Those pumpkin pies are supposed to be the same so don't ask why they're different... I think for some reason the cinnamon floated to the top in the left one? And yes, there is wine in the top picture but I had to open it because it was an ingredient in the sauce!

My "race" plan for next weekend is to see how my legs feel day-of. I know I'm not in the shape I was in last year (you know, when I actually trained for this), but I think on a good day I could have an ok time (PR + 2-4 min). However, if I don't feel great, I'll probably just take my foot off the gas and maybe drink the wine on the course. Wine drinking is something I actually have trained for :)