Backing Off

Monday, September 27 - Recovery Run
4.05M, 30:01
Garmin Data

Tuesday, September 28 - Easy Run + Hill Sprints
6.83M, 48:13
Garmin Data

Wednesday, September 29 - Tempo Run
8.82M, 53:46 (5M@ 28:13)
Garmin Data

Thursday, September 30 - Off/Unplanned

Friday, October 1 - Easy Run/Intervals
am: 5.01M, 35:01
Garmin Data
pm: 8.10M 54:17 (8x300m, 300m R, 47.5 avg)
Garmin Data

Saturday, October 2 - Recovery Run Trails
8.30M, 1:07:26
Garmin Data

Sunday, October 3 - Hilly Loops (5)
22.0M, 2:19:19
Garmin Data

Total Week Miles: 63.10
Total Week Time: 7hrs 7min 6sec

This had to be just about the strangest, stressful, easiest, hardest cut-back week I can remember. It was a very good example of how my life has changed over the years, pushing running to the backburner at times. And yet, I would say it was a very good week of running.

After a relaxed recovery run Monday morning (following a great long run Sunday), I entered my normal morning routine. Wake up Charlotte. Change Charlotte. Play with Charlotte. Then I made a sort-of new parent mistake of underestimating Charlotte's desire to crawl. I placed her down with her blocks and other toys to play while I went back to her room to pull the sheets off her bed and gather up other laundry. It sounds cliche, but I was gone a total of about 30 seconds. By the time I walked back out to the living room Charlotte had crawled as far as the bathroom, dragging her feeding tube/bag the whole way. Unfortunately the weight of the bag and pulled her tube out pretty far. Since the jejunal portion of her tube goes all the way into her intestines, it needs to be placed under a special x-ray machine by an interventional radiologist. And that means a trip to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Mondays.

With everything we've gone through with Charlotte, things proceeded relatively calmly from there. I called Katie, started packing a suitcase for the three of us, and we were on the road in under an hour. At least we could eat dinner at Chipotle we told ourselves.

We finished up at CHW around 5:00 and made it back to Green Bay that night, getting up Tuesday morning to drive the rest of the way to Houghton and arriving about noon. I dropped of Katie so she could change for work, then Charlotte to daycare, and to work myself.

Sometime after 3:00, Katie called me distressed. Daycare had called to tell her that another child had pulled Charlotte's feeding tube completely out. I had a lot of thought/feelings in that moment, but mostly I just felt helpless. I hadn't even been home yet. We collected Charlotte from daycare and made a plan of action. This is an example of an instance when running is theraputic. We decided to drive as far as Green Bay again. So while Katie took care of Charlotte I went out for a run with some hill sprints at the end before we hit the road again.

So Houghton to Green Bay Tuesday night. Green Bay to Milwaukee Wednesday morning. Back to Interventional Radiology by 9:30 a.m. Since we had time to make plans the night before we decided to make appointments with her GI specialist and Speech/Feeding therapist if they were available. This saved us from making a trip in October (so some good came out of it). Since those appointments were after 1:00 we had a few hours to kill after her GJ tube was placed.

It has been my explicit goal to remain as consistent as possible leading up to JFK, making every effort to avoid missing workouts or big chunks of training. My amazing wife took a very tired and cranky Charlotte for a walk around the hospital campus while I went to the parking garage, changed into my running duds and headed out for a make-shift tempo run (replacing the planned 300s which I pushed back to Friday). Luckily (?) I am intimately familiar with running routes around CHW after the 2+ months we spent there last fall. And for whatever reason, when this should have been a really crappy run where I felt tired and worn out, it wasn't. I felt relatively good and ran consistent splits over a rolling course through Wauwatosa. Go figure.

After 1400 miles of driving in a little over two days we arrived back in Houghton around 11:00pm Wednesday night. With the extra effort put in the first three days of the week, I woke up Thursday at 5:00a.m., changed Charlotte's feed as usual and then went back to bed. I used the rationale that it was a rest week and it made no sense to go out for an easy run when I was dragging.

It turned out to be a very good decision, because I had an awesome 8x300 workout Friday night. Sure, I would do 300s in 42-43 in college as opposed to 46-48 now. But hey, I'll take it. It felt good to run relatively fast. Followed that up on Sunday with a great 22 miler on the hilly loop course, running a full five minutes faster than two weeks ago.

So I held my own this week despite the drama. I don't know how much of a rest week it was though. I feel good, but my fear is the real stress will manifest two, three weeks down the road, so I'm tempted to take it easy the first part this week, maybe just doing one workout and a long run. We'll see.