Whether I'm ready or not, there is nothing I can do in this final week to improve my performance so the idea is to not mess it up. The week is meant to keep your legs feeling fresh and loose. Which means I shouldn't do a million squats and I am fine with that!
But first let's recap last week shall we. This week sort of sent me spiralling into self doubt hell. Every run I did felt so laboured. I was just not feeling it. I am hoping it means I am just having bad rehearsals and cleaning out the cob webs so performance day can go off without too many hitches. That is what I am hoping but it's not doing much for my confidence.
We took a couple days off after the 19k and then had a really tough yoga class on Tuesday night. I think it was our toughest one yet. Still loving it but it was a hard one. Wednesday was a run workout. We haven't done any kind of speed training in about a month so I wasn't looking forward to it. We had to run for 50 minutes and do 15 x 1 minute controlled sprints throughout. This about killed me. After I did a couple I had no idea how I was going to do 15!? Anyways the idea was to take as much rest in between sets to be able to maintain an intensity level of 8 or 9 out of 10 on each interval. We completed about 12.5 sets. Probably would have done more but we ran by the sewage plant and I almost threw up.
The next day we did a cross training workout with lots of squats and planks.
So since I haven't done speed work in awhile, plus the squats and tough yoga my legs were not happy. I was very, very sore on Thursday and Friday. I did some foam rolling on my legs and I almost cried as my muscles were in such knots!
Saturday we were supposed to do our last long slow run before the race. It was supposed to be 11k. I decided I wanted to head to the Seawall and run on some of the actual SeaWheeze route. I also wanted to tackle the Burrard Bridge which is the biggest challenge on the route in terms of hills. I just wanted to test it out before race day so there would be no surprises. So we made our way through English Bay and to part of the Seawall for our first 3.5k and then we were going to turn around and head towards the bridge. We started out way too fast for me for the first k. The pace was 5:51. No wonder I felt awful right away. Pretty soon I realized this was not going to be my day. My legs were on FIRE!! My soreness from the week had not gone away and my legs were so tight that I couldn't concentrate on anything else. Nothing felt right. We turned around and I kept going but I was hating this run. We were approaching the bridge and at 6k I stopped and told Jeff I was done. I was so mad at myself. I rarely quit any runs but I didn't want to get to the bridge feeling the way I was. My legs had had it for that week. I sulked a bunch and we walked the rest of the way to the bridge. I started crying and admitted to Jeff that I didn't think I could complete the race. As always he is my rock and talked me off the ledge. He assured me it was just a bad run and I believed him.
So we got to the bridge and I said let's run it! Might as well! The first part of the bridge has a steeper but shorter incline and a long downhill. I flew up and down it like nobody's business. Ok that wasn't too bad. Heading back over the bridge is a much longer gradual incline. I almost made it but had to stop once. Okay not too scary. So in total for the day we did 8.5 k. I was still having major confidence issues after since it was such a bad run but I'll get over it.
Onwards and upwards!
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