Workin' hard

This week was a pretty tough week -- I ran my first over-50 week ever, putting in 57 miles from Sunday through Saturday. But, I am learning where to make adjustments in my running schedule as I go along. Apparently 7 days of running is too many, but 6 is fine. Weird. So instead of having a tempo/hill day and a medium-long run each week, I'm going to rotate those three. Plus, Saturday group runs have been decently long. We ended up doing 10 yesterday, and I have a 20 miler today.

Ah, yes, the fabled 20. Discussion at work yesterday was if there is some sort of physical barrier that makes 20 so hard, or if it's just mental opposition. So many people struggle to run 20 miles that it seems unlikely it's physical -- we all function so differently that glycogen shouldn't deplete that uniformly. Stupid glycogen.

Mentally, though, 20 is a tough one. I have no qualms about 16 or 18, but adding those last two miles is somehow scarier. It's a lot of time running -- we'll probably need about 3 hours with all the people coming today, at least for the first 12 mile leg -- and you have to properly dress, hydrate and fuel for that entire time.

I do find that breaking the runs into multiple legs helps -- today we're doing a 12-mile loop then dropping off some folks and doing an 8-mile loop. Last week we did a 4, 7 and 7 to hit 18.

Well, have to get ready to tackle this run. Back soon!