A Weird Running Week

The past week was sort of a weird, disappointing one for running.

Last weekend, I was so excited to run the Manhattan Half Marathon in Central Park.  First half of 2012!  My roommate Lisa's first half ever!  Yay! 

Saturday morning I woke up to a very snowy city.  The race wasn't exactly cancelled, but it was nonscored, which I took to mean, "Show up if you really really want to, but we wouldn't if we were you."  There was also a food poisoning situation, so we all decided to skip the race.  The sidewalks were terrible and super slippery and I figured I shouldn't take a chance with my ankle still being weird.  Plus who really shows up to run when it's snowy and slushy and gross?

Well apparently a lot of people.  My work friend told me that his friend said it was his most fun race ever.  Sort of feeling like I missed out.  Bummer.

Monday I went to a tradeshow aka spend the whole day on my feet.  My ankle swelled to disgusting proportions, so I figured I should take it easy on Tuesday (supposed to be 5 miles) and spend an hour on the bike at the gym.  I hate skipping a run, but I figure it's better to take it easy than push it too hard and get injured.  Then I foam rolled... DAMN that feels good!

Wednesday my ankle was still huge, so I did my 5 miles on the treadmill.  I sprinted(ish) 1/4 mile repeats with 1/4 mile recoveries.  Followed by foam rolling.  So good.




Thursday I finally got back outside and it felt amazing.  As much as I hate getting out of bed, I think running outside is the only thing that fully wakes me up.  I did an easy five and felt awesome all day. Went to the gym after work and foam rolled some more.  Addicted.

Yesterday was my longest run to date - 19 miles.  It felt surprisingly good, and as usual my first few miles were the toughest.  A lot of firsts on this run - nature called while I was running through the woods, and I made a pit stop at Wawa to use the ladies room and refill my water bottle.  Very classy.

My Garmin started dying around mile 11, so I reset it to make sure that data saved, and started again.  It eventually died, so I tracked myself on mapmyrun... until my phone died too!  Weird.  Here are my splits for the first 16 or so miles:

As usual, my pace was all over the place.  Hoping to smooth that out on next weekend's 20 miler.