140 mile week??

Two years ago, the first week of August 2009, my friend and new sponsor, Kevin Pollock owner of Pollock Landscaping, set off for what was our hardest athletic endeavor ever. The mission was simple, the plans were hazy, but we would not be denied. The goal was to ride bicycles from our home town of Ironton, MO to my wife, Melissa Gillette's, hometown of Berne, IN, but as Kevin said, "Since we have gone that far we might as well ride clear to Ohio." Just like that we had a destination, but of course we did not own any bicycles, so we had to borrow some. This also meant we were unable to put in any training, but training for this mission would have only diminished the challenge that starred us in the face.

Fast forward two years later. I decided to take my running to another level. The mission was simple, the plans were hazy, but I would not be denied...or would I? My goal was to run my first ever 140 mile week. Now unlike the bicycle trip, I have been training by doing a lot of running. It seemed that reaching the 140 mile mark would not be that difficult since I have previously ran 122 miles in a week. So it begins...

Monday started off with a bang. Miles, my two year old son, and I worked together to complete a 21 mile run. Now I do not want to brag or create a family feud, but my prospective is that I did most of the work on that run, while Miles just sat in his jog stroller.

Tuesday brought about a great deal of heat, but Miles and I managed to get in a decent 12 mile run in the early afternoon. So far the week was off to a decent start. Tuesday night is the Reith 5k races not far from my house. Once Melissa got home she watched Miles while I headed off to the race. A three mile warmup and a 3.1 mile race later, which I ran in 17:11, my daily miles were up to 18.1. Now just for a cool down...which is simple right?

This is where the hazy plans got a little complicated. My body decided to experience an economic breakdown. I tried to go, but there was no response in my leg. The only option was to eat a piece of humble pie and walk the two miles home. This brought back memories of the bike trip. My body breaking down was no different then my bicycle pedal falling off outside of Lafayette, IN. The slow walk home was similar to having to carry our bikes up hill through a muddy construction zone.

Wednesday brought about new opportunities and luckily renewed legs. I decided to take it easy today, I just ran 14.75 miles at roughly 7 minutes per mile pace. At this point my goal of hitting 140 miles for the week was vanishing fairly quickly. Kevin and I had these same demons to overcome on our bike trip, especially following my leg injury due to a heckler chucking a nearly full bottle of sports drink at me from his speeding car.

Thursday morning I woke up feeling annoyed at my training for the week so far, but then I saw on Facebook that my friend Benny just completed a nice run that morning. He is battling the tough Texas heat and running some solid workouts, this inspired me to push harder today. What started out as a planned easy 14 mile run ended up being my second fastest time ever for that route, I averaged 6:18 minutes per mile, including a five mile stretch from miles 7-12 at 5:33 pace. Tuesdays struggles seemed far behind me. Thursday night I was able to run another 4 miles with Chris Conley, which brought the days total up to 18 miles.

Friday ended up being an easier day, due to the harder pace on Thursday. Miles and I took his jog stroller out for an easy 12 mile run. This was the last run for Miles in this jog stroller as it is falling apart. During the run it ripped even more. It is now bad enough that even I do not think it is safe, which is saying a lot!

Saturday was a ho-hum 20 mile run. Nothing exciting, just putting in miles. Kind of like pedaling across Illinois when we were surrounded by corn fields for hours on end. No spectators, no fans, no media, and quite frankly as Kevin and I learned nobody cares about your goals as much as you will. We could have quit our bike trip and family would have still invited us over, well some of them would have. Likewise I could have ducked out of this boring 20 mile run and nobody would have noticed, but the thoughts of being lazy would have ate away at my conscience. My weekly miles were now up to 111 miles, so the goal of hitting 140 miles was out of reach, but I could still be able to set a new high mileage week for myself.

Sunday's plan was to run my longest workout ever. I tried to find some suckers to join me for this endeavor, but only got one bite, my brother Jake Gillette. I wonder if Kevin felt obligated to bike with me like Jake felt obligated to run with me...hmm? The workout was simple, atleast on paper! It included an 18 mile warmup at 6:45 pace, followed by 10 miles of alternating sprinting for a half mile and jogging for a half mile, followed by a 2 mile cooldown. This added up to 30 miles. The workout went surprisingly well considering the struggles I experienced earlier in the week. The 10 hard half mile segments were run at an average time of 2:34, which is 5:08 mile pace. This workout brought my weekly mileage up to 134.9, which was short of my 140 mile goal, but better than my previous high week or 122.

One final comparision to the bike trip and this week of training. I was tired and grouchy after both of them!! My goal now is to pedal across the country and instead of hitting 140 miles for a week I aim to average 20 miles per day for an entire month this year.