Crime during training

Posted by Rachel

That title was one of the themes of this week. The other was fatigue. Last week, I ended the week with an awesome 20-miler where the last 10 miles were 10 sec faster than my GMP. As a result, I felt pretty tired this week. I focused on trying to balance the benefits of running on tired legs without overdoing it and getting injured or overtrained. In order to address the title, I'll go through my week with accompanying stories.

Monday (1/4)
The gym parking lot was packed, probably due getting back into the routine post holiday and New Year resolutions. Somehow though, I was the ONLY person in the pool. I was ok with that, and I did not encounter any criminal activity.

Tuesday
This was a track workout (7.7 miles total). I started out strong but got tired REAL quick. Again no crime, but I did eat my first Chipotle burrito of 2016. We stayed away for a while because of the e coli thing, but there were no issues.

Wednesday
I was running around nice and easy (6.7 miles total) because my legs were so dead and was on the sidewalk along the lake. All of a sudden I heard brakes squealing and I looked up and saw a car rear-end another car stopped at a red light, pretty hard (NOT just a tap). I noticed the driver of the car looking over his shoulder and it occurred to me that he was going to make a run for it, which he did. I looked at the license plate number and recited it to myself the whole run home. When I got home I called the cops and reported the license plate, but unfortunately could not describe the driver (who could describe a person sitting in the dark 20 ft away?). I read an article that less than 2% of hit-and-runs in this city are caught, which sucks. How can there be so many assholes?

Thursday
I was running 10 miles, and abandoned tempo in favor of running every 3rd mile at ~7:40 pace (GMP - 15 sec) and the rest easy because my legs were so tired. At one point, I noticed a lot of cops on the other side of the lake but didn't think a whole lot of it. A couple of miles later, while I was running in the darkest part of the lake, I found myself with a police helicoper + search lights directly over my head. I heard instructions coming from the helicopter, including "Surrender! The dogs will find you! Residents, stay inside your home!" No wonder there were way less people around than usual! I got a little bit nervous and ran quickly back to the main road, where a cop stopped me. I thought I was going to get in trouble so I told him (all out of breath from running faster) "I'm not near my home!" He asked where I lived then pointed which way I should go to get there, at which point I took the well-lit main road instead of dark lakeside path. My splits for those miles are comically significantly faster than the rest of my run. If you don't believe this happened, you can check this out. At the time, I didn't know what offense the criminal had committed which made it a little bit scarier than it sounds right now.

Friday
Masters swim practice. My coach said "You looked tired from your very first stroke." That about sums up that workout.

Saturday
20 miles in Golden Gate Park with Chen to practice rolling hills. Fortunately, I did not witness any crimes nor did I run into a crime scene. Also, I had a blast running with Chen and eating takeout Thai food afterward (3 entrees between the 2 of us, of course).

Sunday
Easy run of 6 miles. Again I saw nothing related to any crime, so hopefully that short streak is over.

Next week I'm taking a step-back week to try to balance out some of the fatigue I was feeling this week. I'm feeling good with 5 weeks left, so hopefully the rest of training goes better than this week!