A Long Week

Yes, it was a long week, even though there were 7 days in it like any other. No news on the job front. My former employer has been taking their sweet time deciding who to hire for the vacant position, but has told me they plan to decide by this coming Tuesday. Personally, I'm just taking the mindset that I won't get that job now since they've waited this long to decide and are actually considering other candidates. They new they could have hired me right away and had me start last week if they really wanted me. So, I'm just moving ahead with any other interviews and leads I can get. Right now, I have no pending interviews, about a dozen new jobs I've applied for, and 3 more that recruiters are working on. Other than that, I've got nothing. Needless to say, I've been rather stressed out about the whole situation as we are reaching crunch time, financially speaking. I've just got to remember that famous saying from "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy": "DON'T PANIC".

On the training front, things went well this week, thanks to some cooperative weather for a change. Tuesday and Thursday I did easy "recon" runs of 6 miles. On Wednesday I did my hill workout for 1.5 hours and on Saturday, I put in my longest solo training run ever - 21.8 miles. NICE! It was kinda slow-going because of the new snow we had gotten, but it sure felt good on the feet and body when running on it. I had to persevere through some tightness early on, but weathered the storm and eventually loosened up after about 90 minutes. I did a much better job of hydrating and feeding this time and actually felt pretty good the whole way through. I even got a 2nd and 3rd wind at 2 and 3 hours respectively. In addition, no blisters or serious aches or pains! I've opted to not do the follow-up 2 hour runs on Sundays after my long runs on Saturdays for a while until I get a little more base in. I'm finding that I need a little more recovery time since I'm not used to such long runs yet. Better to take it easy early on and avoid injury, than to overtrain and suffer an early setback. This year my goal is just to finish a 50K and a 50-miler, so there's no point in overdoing it so soon.