Time flies… and when you look at a training calendar, it can certainly fly by even faster. I kept my miles fairly low in April. I ran frequently, but nothing further than the half marathon at the beginning of the month. I decided to let my body rest a little bit and enjoy some down time. Well, that was fun… time to build back up.

Last Friday, I joined the November Project (SF) tribe for some hill repeats in the morning. Since they were meeting in Golden Gate Park and since I take public transit into the city, the only logical choice was to run there. So I added in 3.5 miles before my workout, ran some hills, then of course had to run back to work… which was another 4 miles. Nothing like starting off a Friday with 10 miles and some hill repeats up a waterfall, right?

 

pr-novemeber

friday

 

Then of course, I emailed a friend to see if he wanted to run Saturday morning. I was looking to get in at least 16 and he was running 18… PERFECT. Let’s run 18. About 15 or so miles into it, we started talking about some races coming up and what we had been up to recently. I then realized that this would be the furthest I had run since the Oakland Marathon, which was at the end of March. Come to think of it, this would be the furthest I had run since the half marathon at the beginning of April.

Strangely enough, my legs felt pretty strong. Sure, they were tired and I needed a nap later in the day, but all things considered I jumped right back into an 18-miler and felt pretty good, not to mention the day after a 10 mile run. I’m going to give 90% of the credit to the company. Running with friends is an amazing thing. I may have been able to finish an 18-miler on my own, but it wouldn’t have been easy and I most certainly wouldn’t have had a smile on my face afterwards.

 

saturday

 

Next weekend I have the Bay to Breakers 12k and the original plan was to try and be all speedy and run it as fast as I could… well, I just realized that I’m in the middle of getting ready to run the San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon (oh ya, you know, that little thing) and I have a 22 miler scheduled for Saturday, the day before Bay to Breakers. Since RnRSD is less than a month away, I want to get in the 20+ run well in advance to recover, so it looks like I’ll be running 22 miles on Saturday and 7.5 on Sunday. Of course, the pace will be much more controlled on Sunday and not as “speedy” as I had once hoped for, but I’m excited to be running high miles again… I kind of missed it.

If you are still looking to register for Bay to Breakers, the race is this Sunday and you can save $5 with code: pavementrunner5

I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to wear, but I’ll be rocking red shoes and red Pro Compression socks… I just need to figure out the rest of the outfit. Plenty of pictures to come.

Do you enjoy running high-milage weekends?