It has been a rough road back for Kirsten from her trip to Sudan but I think she is a lot further along than she thinks she is (or takes credit for that is). She has been motivated to go to the pool in the evenings without me, which unfortunately is necessary as I find too many reasons to not swim in the evenings and am better about swimming during lunch. But she has really been pouring on the workouts lately and making sure that she is getting the volume in she needs. She is also showing amazing resiliency with each workout as well (contrary to what she might say) with regards to her speed and efforts.
This morning was a perfect example of her resiliency. On tap was a 1:10 run, or roughly about 10 miles with a 20 minute set that is pretty much as hard as you can sustain for 20 minutes. After her first over 2 hour run since August, the hard bike yesterday morning, and her swimming for the 2nd time this week last night...she was ripe for a lighter day of training. Yet she powered through the run this morning and I was impressed!
After some hooing and hawing this morning before leaving about wanting to fall asleep on the couch if I dilly dallied any longer we got out the door 10 minutes later than we wanted but still within reason. We started out at a casual pace but she wasn't being very talkative the majority of the run (an indication of her displeasure of being out there?). We headed out towards the Washington Monument at about a 8:15-8:30mm pace and made a quick bathroom stop for me about 20 minutes in. She was debating going out on her own so she could run her own pace but didn't want to run alone and decided to stick it out. I was feeling better after the break and as we approached the Jefferson Memorial she broke off down a different trail and ended up in front of me by a good margin before we crossed the bridge into Virginia. It took me almost the full mile of the bridge to catch up to her and she had picked up the pace to 7:45mm, guess she was feeling good!
We got onto the Mt. Vernon trail towards the Memorial Bridge and the sun started to rise behind the Capitol and Washington Monument, it was breathtaking as always and it is moments like that that make it worth getting out of bed that early to start the day off right with the one you love ;) You could see the weather systems demarcation line to the North of us as well since it was dark and cloudy to the south and clear blue/purple/night sky to the North of us with the cloud line fully marking the weather line. At this point I let Kirsten lead the way with 7:50mm. She was clocking along doing well and then we got back to the Lincoln Memorial where we decided we would start the 20 minute set. I told her she was doing well and that I was starting the set and she said "see you at home..."
I started the set and built into the pace/effort that I would settle into for the long haul. Wouldn't you know it....every single stop light on the mall possible I hit and had to stop and wait to change due to rush hour traffic flying through the intersections!!! At the first point of every stop I turned to see where Kirsten was and she was no more than 50-100 yards behind me...she was rocking it! And so it went the entire way back home with me getting stopped at every light. She would later chide me and say "See if you ran my pace you wouldn't have had to stop at every light!!" So true my dear...so true!
I hit the 20 minute mark about 6 blocks from home (thank goodness) after a rough pull up Capitol Hill and trotted the last 6 blocks in as a cool down. Once I got to our block sure enough Kirsten was right there about 1/4 mile behind me clocking along! I had averaged 6:48mm for that 20 minutes and figured Kirsten was in the 7-7:05mm range...a SOLID EFFORT!
Although she said she didn't want to speculate as to what her pace was I could tell that her sprits were a little higher and she was just as proud of herself as I was proud of her for her efforts. If her Wednesday workout was a mental breakthrough...I would have to say today's workout was a physical one!! Good job Kirsten!
Now for the first of our last 4 century rides tomorrow....legs don't fail us now!!! At least tomorrow we will get richly rewarded with our good friend's annual pig roast two blocks from our house...good food, friends, and more food!!! More on the weekend...after the weekend is over! The home stretch is almost here!
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