Cowboy Up Big Girl and Put On a Jacket!

Wind will be the death of me......or at least the death of my training plan.

Didn't have the best of training week's last week. Skipped both my Tues AND Wed runs. This after I ended last week's 9 miles on such a high! Why in the world would I not be super motivated to get out there and tear up the road?

Four words.....

Columbia.River.Gorge.Wind

It has been a tad bit cold up here in the PacNW this last week. Mid 40s so nothing too terrible - at least not compared to all you NorthEasterners and your negative wind chill temps!! Though we're still not down to freezing, the winds have picked up tremendously. We live right at the end of the Columbia River Gorge so said winds in the Portland area are at their worst by our house. 

That said, add in the 30-40-50 mph winds we had this week to our 40 degree temps and you can imagine the chilliness and my desire to do anything BUT get out and run. Even on the dreadmill. So instead  I spent both Tues and Wed on my butt in front of the fireplace with a glass on wine in hand. I'll admit it was wonderful at the time, but I know better than to skip out on my interval runs. Big girl pants, you ask? On the floor, just laying around, stinkin' up the joint. Once again I proved to be my own worst enemy. 

Thankfully, in my fit of lazy, I was able to gather up some motivation again on Fri/Sat and got back to it. Come Sunday I was not as prepped for my 10 mile trail run as I would have liked but did get my cold rear out there and finished averaging a 9:58 min/mile. Not as fast as I would have liked either, but given that I was on a trail and not the even pavement, in addition to dealing with the wind, I still consider it a success. 

(Though I had to lap it four times to get in the 10 miles, I still preferred this scenery to the road!)

I do need to focus these next three weeks on nutrition during my longer runs in prep for race day. Had some wheat pancakes with a maple peanut butter sauce and two cups of coffee around 10am on Sunday. Finally got out on my run by 1:30pm, drank about 4 oz of water at mile 5 and definitely felt like I bonked around mile 8. I ate the same thing before last week's long run, drank the same 4oz of water and felt amazing. Chalking it up to the technical difficulties of the trail wearing me out vs. the smooth/fast pavement. (should also start mixing in a Nuun tablet with my water again - did this all through the summer's tri training but stopped these last few months,  not sure why)  I'll get back on the road this weekend and test things out again. I am a firm believer that nutrition needs are different for everyone so I usually just experiment versus trying to adhere to someone else's suggestions. Makes for a bad boiler sometimes but well worth it when you find what works!!

All that said.....only three weeks left till the Holiday Half. Definitely looking forward to those last two weeks of taper....here's what's left...

COMMITTED to getting out for Tues, Wed and Thursday's runs - how else am I going to justify the massive quantities of gravy I intend to eat over Thanksgiving?! :)

At what distance do you start adding in a nutrition plan to your race?