Season is changing!

Saturday BIKE 2:20 and 40 miles
Sunday RUN 4:00 and 18.3 miles

Cool temps, a distinct crisp feeling in the air, and a steadily changing display of green to red, yellow, and orange. It all adds up to one thing--fall is here!

Oh fall been here a few days now, but this weekend it settled in. Don't expect anymore warm days.

Saturday I was going to ride with SM and NK, but rain in the forecast kept them indoors (no need to risk injury with their race just weeks away!) for their long ride. I was invited to join their trainerfest, but I said I wasn't that devoted this time of year. Ah...what? Seems I was! I surprised myself by actually wanting to do a trainer ride, so I picked a long aerobic interval session from the ultra plan, popped in a movie (DH's first suggestion of an asian war film failed to interest me, so ROTK instead), and settled in. For the first time all year, I had the HRM with me and watched it--I didn't have set HR goals but I shot for 75% at 100=105 and 75+% at 105-110. Those aren't high, or accurate. I know it's hard to get the HR up on the trainer. Towards the end my left knee started talking--that same pez animus? injury I felt last year. Cut it short and skipped the CD. I noticed afterwards that I wasn't even tired. So was it a waste of time?

JP did IMWC today!! WHOOP I'm so happy for her :)

Sunday TV and I ran Greensfelder with the promise of bigger hills for my McNot Again training. And oh yeah--he found us some hills! I was doing great with them, but had moments of "why?" and "are we done yet". Oh boy. I've had these before, and had to decide: do I keep going and push through it? Do I need to rest (oh the irony, see above)? Am I burning out?

I've been trying to be mindful of how this season ends and how next season begins, paying attention to the few weeks in between. McNot Again is Nov 9, Ultra training starts with pre-week on Dec 16. A precious 5 weeks of probably not much. I think the habit of training will win, and I'll be doing something the entire time. It's OK to go out and have fun, but don't call it training.

Anyhoo, back to my run.

Around 9 miles we stopped by the VC and I face the decision of How Much More And Where. I said I didn't care, where ever we went was fine with me. In all honesty, I think I was bowing out of the decision because I feared that left to my own choice I'd pick the shortest trail to be done faster! After some thinking on this feeling, I realized: I wasn't physically fatigued, I was mentally fatigued.

Thankfully, we kept going. I say that because I was perfectly capable of more than 9 miles and really needed them for this race. By the end, I was having to push myself to run up a hill and I was walking more than before. But I did it, I'm happy with it, and now I have to restructure my remaining weekends--this was supposed to be a rest week!