Summer Pondering

I know it's only early August, but for some reason it felt like late summer out there to me this morning. It was still pretty hot and muggy out, but the days are getting shorter, the blackberries along the powerlines were sweet and delicious, a few leaves on the blueberries bushes were beginning to turn red, and the berries on the bushes that I have yet to identify are slowly morphing from white to the blush pink that seems to signal the turn of the seasons. The catbirds were mewing and the towhees were calling. I ran the 5 mile Homeplace loop, stopping multiple times to pick the abundant blackberries that practically fell off the brambles right into my hand they were so ripe. Yum.

As I ran, I pondered. Today's run finally got me to a 30-mile week. I know 30 isn't a lot, but it's taken quite a while for me to get to a place where I felt like I could run 30 miles in a week. Hopefully in a month or so, if I run a 30-mile week I'll preface it with "only" but for now, I'll take it. I hope this means I'm beginning to claw my way back, and not feel so timid about things, fearful of hurting my foot again. I'm not sure what it is, but although I'm glad to be running, I currently feel like I don't have that fire that is needed to run fast and well. Last year was such a good year, and I felt like I was going into 2012 strong. Perhaps it is simply that after a solid 50k at TARC and the high hopes I had for the summer, the wind just got taken out of my sails with the injury, its resulting time off and slow comeback. Perhaps it is this muggy, humid weather. Perhaps it just is what it is, a bit of a slump, a normal ebb and flow in training. Regardless, I feel a bit unsettled by the feeling, and want to get that fire back. However, it seems to be misplaced at the moment :-) .

Sunday is the Breaker. I knew after my time off that the summer series was going to be a bit of a struggle. Perhaps I should have just deferred my entries until next year so as not to feel pressured during the races, but I just couldn't resist a BadAss hoodie :-) The Scuffle was more disappointing that I would have liked. And so, I've decided to simply run the Breaker, and not try to race it. Bob had posted an article on Facebook a few weeks back, and the last line in the article kept popping into my head as I was thinking about the Breaker this morning: ."..you can still be a badass and not take yourself so seriously." Yup. So there it is. Maybe it's a cop out, but it feels right, at least this time around. If I feel I can, I'll push the pace, but I'm going to try to have fun during the Breaker, or as much fun as you can have torturing yourself on the mountain side, anyway! :-)

My plan for the next few months is to get in my miles, get in a long run each week, and even *gasp* do one workout a week - alternating a hill workout and a MP road run each week. It was Ryan's suggestion to alternate the hills and a MP run. He knows me well; it is obvious from past attempts at following a training plan that I am basically incapable of doing so. To have too many workouts in my planner would simply be a waste of time. So, the Breaker will be my hill workout for next week, and it will no doubt prove to be a harder and faster hill workout than I would chose to do on my own. I definitely plan to race the Bruiser, and am hopeful that a month of solid miles, long runs and a workout or two :-) will put me in decent shape to do just that. And come hell or high water, I'll have gotten that fire back for Stonecat at the very least. I've got plans for that one, for sure.