Dues

It has been a tumultuous 6 weeks. Denise flew to Florida for her "good bye" party at the Tampa company she started working for 10 years ago after getting her MBA; we flew to Chicago to run the Chicago Half Marathon and sightsee a few days; we travelled to Binghamton, N.Y., for a medical emergency, and return to run 21.8 miles that Sunday; finally, she became ill with strep and spent a weekend very sick.

This weekend, I volunteered yesterday to be "sweeper" after a local 5k. We both spent a lot of time on our feet in the early fall Maryland weather helping prepare for the race and walking the 3.1 miles of the race with the last participant. We know now, this was too much time on Denise's feet.

This morning, I coached and mentored her through 24 miles, travelling from south-east College Park's Lake Artemesia to just short of the Beltway north-west of Silver Spring and back. She was not totally recovered from her illness or the previous weeks' stresses. The distance pummelled her physically and mentally. What I had hoped would be a celebration of her last, longest run, and cumulation 6 months' slow, incremental, training became instead a near death march.

She finished her 24 miles, though it was not pretty. Now, she will taper slowly downward  into her 26.2 mile effort. Our plan is that 3 weeks after doing 24 miles with little rest from the stresses of life and training, she can do well at 26.2 after 3 weeks of careful stress management and decreasing running miles.