It is with great pleasure that we present the first of what we hope to be a regularly recurring series. With One Week we hope to take you deeper inside the mind of a runner and show you more of what goes on between races and workouts. For this first installment, Jeannette Faber (BAA) presents one monster week. In fact, it’s only fitting that she gave me nine days worth of material for it, since it’s quite large in every aspect. As this develops, we hope to bring you not just weeks where runners have huge races and/or epic workouts, but it’d even be nice to see how the serious runners handle a down week or a straight-up off week.

Here’s Jeannette, taking us from Friday June 8th through Tuesday June 12th:

Friday June 8th

9 am – Morning shakeout around McCormick Pier. Legs feel well rested and ready to go. Spent most of the morning and afternoon doing laundry, getting caught up on errands, and just being lazy.

4 pm – Chad and I loaded up the dogs (we have a one year old French Bulldog/Chihuhua mix and an 11 year old Jindo) and headed down to Lewis and Clark College for day one of the Portland Track Festival. Shortly after arriving the slow heat of the women’s 5K started and I enjoyed cheering on a couple of my local friends.

7:20 pm – I head out for a three mile warm up with Esther Erb and a number of the other ladies in our race. There was definitely a good vibe before the race as everyone had the same goal, to run the Olympic Trials automatic standard of 32:45, and we were all excited to have Kim Conley pacing us through 4 miles.

8:15 pm – Gun goes off. I started out at the back of the pack but was feeling good and hitting the right splits though 5K. Before I knew it the pack had gapped me a bit, a cramp developed in my rib cage, and the 78 second laps quickly slipped to 80s and 81s. Crap! I thought about dropping out and saving my legs for the Half Marathon Championships the following weekend, but ended up fighting through the tough second half and finishing 9th in a PR (by ten seconds) of 33:12.

Those last two miles really killed me. After the race I was pretty disappointed but also trying to focus on the fact that I had run a PR. I often have to remind myself that even if I don’t achieve the set goal, as long as I’m improving then I have to be happy. Three mile cool down.

10:00 pm - Chad and I wallowed in my disappointment with beers and burgers at the Green Dragon.

Saturday June 9th

7:30 am – Wake up and take the dogs for a walk. Breakfast.

8:30 am – Text my good friend Laura, who is also heavily involved with the Portland Track Festival, and see if she can get me into the 5K tonight. Done.

9:00 am – Twenty minute shakeout on Wildwood with Esther and Chad. They continued on while I played with the dogs. Breakfast at Caps and Corks.

11:00 am - Talk with my coach, Terry Shea, about the idea of bouncing back and running the 5k tonight. I’m feeling completely unsettled about my 10K last night and just want to take a crack at breaking 16 minutes tonight (my PR is 16:06) in the solid field that has been assembled. Terry doesn’t love the idea…well, he doesn’t even like it…but he advises me on how to best prepare for it.

The rest of the day I spent wrestling with my emotions on last night, trying to decide if I will actually be able to bounce back tonight, and then trying to take my mind off of it completely and let my body decide. I attempted to take an afternoon nap but my brain wouldn’t shut down.

4:00 pm – Head to Lewis and Clark once again. I spent the first couple hours of the meet talking with friends and taking photos of the races. It was exciting to watch Carrie Dimoff (who I had done a few workouts with lately) run 9:55 in the steeple, which would later get her into the trials.

7:30 pm – It’s now almost time to warm up for the 5K and I’m in a completely different state of mind than I was this morning. First off, my emotions are a little more settled and the disappointment of failing to hit the 32:45 standard in the 10K has worn off (a bit). In addition, the fatigue from last night is settling into my legs and the idea of going out for a warm up doesn’t even appeal to me. I chat with Terry briefly on the phone and we decided it’s best to scratch from the 5k. The 16 minute barrier will have to wait for now. I enjoy watching the rest of the meet and scarf down a piece of pizza as Dathan Ritzenhein runs the first of his two 5Ks for the night.

9:30 pm – Beers and snacks at Lucky Lab Brewery in Southwest Portland with Esther and her Zap teammate, Landon Peacock.

Sunday June 10th

7:45 am – Easy 8 mile run along the Willamette River and the Spring Water Corridor. My legs are much more sore now than they were Saturday morning

11:00 am – 90 Minute muscle melt massage at The Dragontree Spa in NW Portland. This may be my favorite place in the entire world. The massage was a birthday gift from a friend and I’ve been saving it up for after the 10K.

7:00 pm – Watched the season finale of Mad Men with Chad. Don Draper….what a dog.

Monday June 11th

7:30 am – Met Michelle for a 7 mile easy run along the bridges of downtown Portland. Hamstrings are still rather sore so I endured a ten minute ice bath afterwards. Really hate these.

Noon to 5:00 pm – Work. I have a part-time gig as an office assistant for a local consulting firm.

5:00 pm – Four super slow motion miles from work, along the river, and back home. 11 miles total for the day.

Tuesday June 12th

9:00 am to 2:00 pm - Work

4:00 pm – Met Krista at the Lincoln High School track for my only workout of the week. Coming off of a race and heading right back into another one on Saturday means this is a very light and easy workout. After a three mile warm up Terry wanted 6×600 at 2:05. Krista ran the Newport Marathon on June 2nd so she was not quite fresh, but it was a huge help to have her there with me for this. I felt completely dead going into the session, but once we got started on the 600s I came back to life. They all ended up being between 2:01 and 2:02 and felt really smooth. Three mile cool down.

8:00 pm – Giant ice cream sundae at Ruby Jewel Scoop Shop. If you are ever in Portland, please stop by this place and try the salted caramel ice cream with dark chocolate. It will change your life.

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Stay tuned for Part Two, coming later this week and including Jeannette’s recap of her experiences from Wednesday June 13th through Saturday June 16th.

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