I’m including all the CM50K training in my FANS training, not selecting an arbitrary week-numbering system.

Week 13
Monday: rest
Tuesday: rest (massage)
Wednesday: 4.5 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk)
Thursday: 6.5 mi, road
Friday: 5.5 mi, trail (Bagley)
Saturday: 8.2 mi, trail (SHT, Twin Ponds toward Haines Rd & back)
Sunday: 10.2 mi, trail (SHT at Jay Cooke toward Wild Valley Rd & back)
Total: 34.9 mi

Week 14
Monday: 5.3 mi, road
Tuesday: 9.6 mi, road
Wednesday: 6.1 mi, paved trail (Lakewalk), 4 miles at tempo effort
Thursday: 6.7 mi, trail (Hartley)
Friday: rest
Saturday: 3.3 mi, road (Be the Match 5K + short warmup)
Sunday: 14.9 mi, trail (SHT @ 123rd Ave W toward Jay Cooke & back)
Total: 46 mi

So, some of this training I’ve already forgotten about. Whoops.

In these last few weeks leading up to FANS, I’m trying to eat better and overall do a better job of taking care of myself. Taking training seriously doesn’t just mean putting in the miles; that’s only a portion of what it takes to have a successful race. I’ve been doing myself a disservice by neglecting the nutrition part of my training. I can’t fix my bad eating habits overnight (well, I can, there’s actually nothing stopping me other than my own willpower and laziness, but it is more likely to stick if I make smaller changes first), but I can take steps to improve my diet overall.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to go crazy with any radical food intake strategies like keto or high fat low carb or Whole 30 or whatever. I won’t be smugly posting about how “clean” I’m eating. I eat food I’ve dropped so I don’t eat clean. I am not the only person eating in my household, and I’m not the only person who prepares food, so I can’t make drastic changes to what I eat without bringing my husband on board, and it’s not my place to dictate the menu on the nights I’m not making food (which used to be every night! I rarely cooked). But now I’m making dinner about twice a week. My plan is to make something Monday and Tuesday night that is relatively healthy and will have leftovers, so I can have some decent lunches. No more pizza lunches 3x a week!

I am not super creative in the kitchen, so I never know what to make. I also don’t have a dishwasher, a lot of counter space, or a lot of fancy appliances, so I can’t make complex things without causing a lot of extra work for myself. I do know someone who is super creative in the kitchen, though: my cousin writes a food blog, The Sea Salt, with lots of delicious recipes, surfing photos, and mostly vegetarian ingredients. (I don’t really care because I like to eat meat, but it’s a nice feature for those who are vegetarian or looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diet.) So I made a recipe of hers last Monday, Falafel Spiced Quinoa Salad with Crispy Chickpeas. It was delicious AND it provided a LOT of leftovers! I might add chicken to it next time I make it.

I’m not a chef and the lighting in my kitchen sucks, but I took a photo anyway.

Besides trying to make some better food choices (which I wasn’t completely successful at – the red velvet Oreos I bought for CM50K but did not eat were NOT going to go to waste), I did do actual running. I took 3 days off after Chippewa Moraine 50K, got a massage the final day off, and then returned to running. I made a concerted effort to start running on challenging trails again, rather than just Lakewalk run upon Lakewalk run (and I’ve got to stop running there shortly, as it’ll be overtaken by tourists in those awful surrey-with-a-fringe-on-top bike things).

I ran the Be the Match 5K on Saturday the 13th. It went ok. I ran 29:43, which is not my best time ever, but was still under 30 minutes. My hope is that I’ll never run a road 5K in over 30 minutes’ time, unless I’m 80 years old, pacing a friend, or… I don’t know, some other extenuating circumstance. I was planning to do a short recap of the race, but decided not to. It wasn’t a goal race, it wasn’t a particularly well-run race, and my recapping plan was spoiled by technical difficulties.

I wanted to experiment with taking real mile splits, so I hit the lap button when I passed each mile marker (well, the first two). According to the auto-lap feature, my splits were 8:59, 9:33, and then 11:11 for the final “1.17” (a 9:34 pace). So that wasn’t the best, but other than the first mile, it’s not super far off, as I ran a 9:35 overall pace via the official results.

My lap button time splits were: 9:40, 7:26, and 12:38 (11:29 pace for 1.1 miles). Uhhhh. I think there was a mistake with the placement of the second mile marker, as best as I can tell. I’ll have to try this experiment again. Overall, this was not a particularly well-run race, thanks to poor training, tired legs, and poor mental attitude. I slept ok and ate ok before the race, for the first time in the history of me running this race, and I still ran my second best 5K time ever, but I was kind of thinking I’d just magically PR. I also didn’t PR in fundraising, although I think we came close to last year’s. We raised just over $1100 officially, but we did have 2 donors who made donations that were accidentally not attributed to our team. I was hoping to raise $2000, but realistically that wasn’t happening. My mom and I are the only ones on our “team” who fundraise, so realistically we’ve already maxed out our donor base.

The weather was decent the past couple of weeks, for the most part. There were even a few days that were actually hot! Relatively speaking. I run so much better when I’m in just a t-shirt and shorts. I’m breaking in a new pair of road shoes at the moment (Mizuno Wave Runners), and trying to decide what shoes to wear at Superior. My shoes from Chippewa are pretty beat up, but it’s looking like this weekend is going to be muddy and gross, so I might wear my old shoes (with ~567 miles on them) and save the new ones (~157 miles) for another day.

I’m kind of ready for this block of races to be over with: I don’t think I’ll plan so many races that require travel in such a short period of time.  Between traveling for hockey, racing, and work, I’ve been away from home more than I’d like. Too much time away from the cats! Next year I’ll have to be much more thoughtful about how I schedule my races.