Tough Choice

I may have killed any chance of running up to my potential on October 29. I decided to give blood today. I was on the fence about whether or not to donate. I trained hard and want to race well. On the other hand, it’s possible that my blood donation could save someone’s life. I’m a big believer in giving blood, so I decided to donate and take my chances with the race. Usually donating doesn’t noticeable effect me for more than a few days. However, I’ve never donated this close to a race before, so I’m not sure what the effect will be. I’m doing what I can to recover as quickly as possible (lots of fluid, big meal tonight, and rest). I’ll run my miles at an easy pace the rest of this week, on Sunday I’ll run a few miles at half marathon pace and see how I feel, and then just continue my taper and hope for the best. There’s not much else I can do.

Before giving blood I ran at lunch. Since the next few days will be at a recovery or an easy pace, I ran hard today. I ended up with eight miles, including 5 x 1 mile at a 6:09 target pace. My times for each mile were 6:11, 5:59, 5:57, 6:11 and 6:21. The first and last miles were into the wind, the second and third were with the wind, and the fourth mile was pretty much out of the wind (blocked by trees). The fourth mile was my best effort. It was really the only mile where I kept a consistent pace throughout the full mile. The first mile I ran too hard. I was close with the time, but considering the wind, I would have been slower if I had run at the proper effort. The second and third miles, I ran the first half mile too fast and then tried to slow to the proper pace/effort. By the last mile, I was done. The wind had picked up a little, and I didn’t have the strength to fight through it. Going too hard in mile one and in the first halves of miles two and three didn’t leave me with much in the tank. Overall it was a good workout coming after a hard run and a lot of walking on Sunday. I did basically nothing on Monday and got a good night’s sleep last night.