Training Runs and Bad Vandy Basketball

Whenever you plan your marathon training, it seems as if everything is set in place for you.  I've been following Hal Hidgon's marathon guide and it's nice because every single run is planned out for you.  All you have to do is run.  That's it.  Dummy proof.  Well, this plan doesn't take into account when college friends come into town.  They pick one football game and one men's basketball game to attend each year.  The past couple of seasons, they have come into town when Vandy plays our hated rivals, the Florida Gators.  Gross.  

This puts a strain on the running schedule because my friends and I like to have a good time, which means we like to go downtown, stay out late, and have some adult beverages.  This isn't conducive to a good workout the next day.  This time, however, I told them that I have my first training run (14 miles) with the Nashville Striders on Sunday, so Saturday HAS to be tame.  I also flip flopped my off day, so I ran my pace run on Friday and took Saturday off.  This meant that my Friday night would be the crazy night.  Well, it was, and I'm glad I had all day saturday to recuperate.  Saturday I took it easy, had a nice Noshville breakfast, played some apples to apples with my friends, and went to an Eric Brace show (lead singer from Last Train Home) at Station Inn.  I didn't necessarily get to bed as early as I should have for a 7 am start in East Nashville, but I wasn't hungover for the training run either.  

Sunday morning was a pretty cold morning, with the starting temperature at about 20 degrees.  I struggled with my decision as to what I should wear.  I opted with a long sleeve running shirt with my SportHill InFuzion top.  I didn't wear long spandex, and when I arrived at Bongo Java in East Nashville, I saw I was the only one not wearing them.  I guess that's the Montana in me.  

This was my first training run with the Nashville Striders, and I was nothing less than impressed.  We had at least 150 people ready to run the 14 miles, and the group had water/gatorade stations at 3, 5.5, 9, and 11.5 miles.  Everyone was very friendly and was very happy when I saw some bagels, bananas, and fluids at the end of the run.  I will definitely be attending the rest of the Striders' training runs.

The run itself went really well.  The route was most of the first half of the Country Music Marathon, which is fairly hilly and challenging.  The plan was to run with 9 minute splits, which is 50 seconds more than my predicted marathon pace.  The legs felt great even when heading up a 2 mile hill from miles 3 to 5.  The pace was fast slow enough I could talk, yet fast enough to let me know we were running.  I really had no complaints, but I did have to stop a couple of times because my running partner Amy had some stomach issues.  Twice we had to stop for a few minutes, the first of which I stood outside and got a little chilly, but the second time we stopped in McDonalds, so I was out of the elements.  The one time I felt a little frustrated was at the end of the run when Amy said 'I think the end is at that red light'.  Well, the red light seemed like a mirage, everytime I thought we ran for a few minutes, I'd look up and it seemed like we didn't get closer.  Eventually we made it and now I feel optimistic about how the marathon in St. Louis is going to turn out.  

Oh, and Vandy lost by 25.