Recovery week.

This past week was a recovery week. The purpose of these things according to Pfitz is to allow the body to recover somewhat from the increasing amounts of mileage. Mileage was scheduled to be cutback to 37 miles a week. I skipped one recovery run so I ended up at 33 miles this week. Though describing it only as skipping a recovery run seems okay, I had to move the schedule around. The first two runs on Tuesday and Wednesday went according to plan, but Thursday morning which had a scheduled modest 8 miles, I ended up skipping in the morning and it was just too warm in the evening. Friday came and went without a run and forced myself to do it on Saturday. Sunday is long run day of 12 miles and the plan originally had a recovery run the day before, but since I already did 8 miles the previous day, I skipped it.

Sunday's long run was a bit different. The Scotiabank waterfront marathon had a "tune-up" run. These are scheduled runs set up by the race to get people to run together. I don't think I mentioned this before, but I'm going to be a pacer again for the 1:45 half at the race. Being a pacer gives free entry and free gear which is a nice gig if you can get it. One of the conditions is that you have to attend one of these tune-up runs so people can get a chance to meet you and to allow the race to advertise the pacing program and the sponsor who this year is Brooks. I haven't run in Brooks shoes since 2008. Last year Asics sponsored the pacers and I think the year before that Addidas was the sponsor. Whomever is willing to pay the bills I suppose.

So the tune-up run had three options. a 20k, 10k and a 5k distance. The 20k distance would have been perfect for me since I was supposed to do 12 miles, but when I inquired about it, the organizers had other plans. Only the marathon pacers would be doing the 20k distance, whereas the half pacers would be doing the 10k. The pacers were supposed to run their race pace as part of the tune-up run. I'm not sure that this was wise. If you think about it, someone that was going to follow a pacer that they would follow in September was being asked to run 6 miles at their half marathon pace today. This is basically a 6 mile LT run on a day when they should probably be doing a long run.

With only 6 miles on tap as part of the run, I had to make up an additional 6 miles. They had staggered the start time of the three races so that we would all basically arrive at the finish line at about the same time. Since I had arrived really early to beat the rush and because I had intended on doing the 20k, i had some time to get the 6 miles in before my race. I basically just ran the 10k route which was already marked out. It felt weird passing the km markings and aid stations knowing that I was going to run this same thing again in about an hour.

As for the actual tune-up run itself, there really wasn't much to tell. I ran for the first 10 minutes and had a group around me but when I stopped for the walk break (I was doing 10 and 1's), all but one of the group kept going. I continued with one woman doing 10 and 1's, but she said the pace was faster than she was used to. I lost her at the turnaround point, though she did say after that she ended up with a faster time than she was expecting so i guess it was a good day. I finished in 50:20 which would have put me on pace for a 1:46:12 half. Close enough.