“Best Laid Plan”

For the past 2 weeks, my life has been focused on work, to the detriment of my training schedule. I squeezed in a swim practice, and a bike ride and a run around my neighborhood, but mostly the pages of my training log are blank. Now that the September appellate-court crunch has subsided, training can become a priority again. I have 1 and 1/3 more sprints to do this season – the Acorn on Oct. 4, and the swim part of the Riverside Sprint on Oct. 12. Realistically, I’m as prepared for these events as I’m going to be. Continued training will help maintain my fitness level, but it won’t make me faster. However, it’s not triathlon training I’m worried about.

I’m also signed up for the Half-Marathon on Nov. 15, and I do need to be building up my endurance for those 13.1 miles. The last time I did a half-marathon (November, 2 years ago), I finished my tri season in July and then focused on running for the next 3 months. That’s not happening this year, and I’m feeling woefully unprepared. Unfortunately, “cramming” for a race doesn’t produce the same benefit as it might for an exam. I’ve heard under-training is better than over-training, and I’m hoping that theory actually works. I don’t have many weekends left that are available for some longer distance runs, i.e., more than the 3-4 miles I’ve been doing. Of course, I never anticipated running the whole thing anyway, so I expect to finish – eventually – even if I walk more than I’d intended. But I’d wanted to beat my previous time, which was just under 3 hours. I’m not feeling anywhere ready to do that.