…were the first words my ex-husband said to me over the phone, after reading Sunday’s race report.  I laughed so hard, because he’s the sweetest, well-spoken Englishman and I don’t even think he called me that in the midst of our worst fights.  And I have to admit…I am.

Last week, because of the mini-taper for the race, it ended up only being a 38-mile week.  I was due for a cutback anyway, since the previous 4 weeks mileage were 57, 50, 49, 50, it came at a good time.  But since this week is technically my first week of taper, I didn’t want to lose whatever quality work was on the schedule, as well as keeping the scheduled mileage.

So yesterday I ran 8 easy, no pushing, averaged 9:07.  No complaints, felt good.  Today’s schedule (after some creative rearranging)  was 8 w/5×600 (the usual 5K pace, 90 sec rest intervals).

I won’t lie, I wondered how speedwork would feel after a major jolt to the body, especially because my fertile imagination still pondered sudden death, dropping among the army of fat, brown geese waddling along the path – though considering the unprecedented amount of goose shit today, I was more likely to slip and fall than collapse from a workout.

So forget my previous VO2max pacing, I figured today would be fine doing it for effort, but one thing was sure, I was doing ‘em, no question about that.  Started my first one, heard that tuneless beep on my Garmin that says the workout has fallen below my chosen pace.  No surprise, it could beep all it wanted, and it did, incessantly.  Final turtle pace tally: 7:25, 7:29, 7:29, 7:25, 7:34.  Eh, I really can’t complain after the weekend I had.  It did the job, got my legs moving and my heart beating, but that was all I had in me today.

Another observation from Sunday, as I look down as my lightly skinned knees and wonder how that happened (I really haven’t a clue).

Know that if something like major dehydration happens to you, you lose all reasoning, because I remember at one point, during that slow death march to avoid a DNF, I kept wondering if I was dehydrated or had hyponatremia (too much water!).  I knew it was one or the other, but was paralyzed in my thoughts as to what to do about it, so I did nothing.  Crazy stuff.

So tomorrow I have 5 recovery on tap and on Sunday, my last long run (really? already? sigh, can’t believe this is coming to a close) of 17 miles.  My main goal for the 17 is to take my time, my secondary goal is to not want to puke when I take my gels.

They’ll be in the flask, which will help, but some time after I puked from the sports drink on Sunday, I had an idea in the back of my mind that I should take another gel, but the thought was absolutely nauseating.  I’m hoping that was only temporary disgust, unlike when you get drunk in high school on pina coladas and can’t drink them for a decade…if so, this could be problematic.

Let me close by saying I cannot wait for the debates tonight.  I see McCreepy has finally agreed to attend now that he’s done saving the world.  I’m utterly excited to watch Obama be as erudite, logical, level-headed and brilliant as ever.  The Class Act vs. The Lizard…this should be fun.

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