Week In Review: Aug 28 - Sept 4

This is my weekly training journal. Including it in the blog gives me a little extra accountability in the mileage department & helps me stick to my schedule. :)

10 Weeks to Clarksburg Half Marathon!!

Last Saturday, I ran my last 10K for the year (Summer Breeze in San Leandro). Now, it's back to half marathon training -- ten weeks to Clarksburg Half Marathon on November 13!

Monday: 4 miles easy. Kind of warm out and I also ran the hilly route, so I probably should've taken it slightly slower, but still a good, short recovery run.

Tuesday: 6.5 miles (2 wu + 6 x 800 @ 10K pace with 400 recoveries) 3.5 miles (2 wu + 2 x 800 @ 10K pace with 400 recoveries) Ugh. This sucked, for lots of reasons. Mostly I'm blaming it on a combination of not being fully recovered from Saturday and bad luck. I decided to walk away after two somewhat questionable intervals, which I think was the smarter choice.

Thursday: 7 miles (1 wu + 6 @ 7:52 / mile) Not what I'd call a pleasant run (heat*, hills, wind, asthma), but I got it done, chest pain- & stomach cramp-free, no less. The goal pace for this run was 7:50-7:55, but considering everything I was up against, part of me wonders if the right effort level might have been more like 8:00 / mile and that averaging 7:52 actually means I was running harder than I should've been. Still, I averaged 179 bpm, which is about 80% mhr for me (ie, supposedly I wasn't all that running that hard). Somehow it felt harder than that.

*Y'all know that when I say "heat," I mean relative to SF, right? Meaning it was like 70°? Just checking.

Friday: 5 miles easy. I've been trying to go back to running hilly routes on my easy days; unfortunately, that makes it a little tougher to make sure I'm running at the right intensity. The target pace for this run was 8:50-8:55 and I averaged 8:52, but again, considering hills, wind (grrrr...), & heat, I kind of wonder if I should be shooting for 9:00-9:05ish instead. (Sounds like a job for the heart rate monitor...)

Saturday: 12 miles easy. Originally, this was supposed to be a tempo run day, & the long run was supposed to be Sunday, but due to all kinds of frustrating crazy that's not worth going into, that plan became non-implementable. Feeling kind of pissed, I ruminated over what to do for a while, then finally decided to just do the long run today because I had the time and didn't have to drive anywhere to do it. The first six miles were kind of insanely rough on my shin splints, but strangely the pain mostly disappeared during the second six. In general, it was a good run, though, and I did a good job of keeping it at an easy pace. (Again, shooting for 8:50-8:55 / mile & ended up running 9:01 / mile, which, considering that I ran basically the first half into a stiff headwind and also had to contend with a few hills, was probably about right. I did wear the heart rate monitor this time & averaged 164 bpm, so that's a good yard stick for what I should be doing on these easy runs in terms of effort.) And, bonus for everyone, I came back in a MUCH better mood than when I left. :)

Grand Total: 31.5 miles

Not bad, for a post-race week (was that only last weekend??? Geez, this has been a long week...). I was hoping to get Saturday's originally scheduled tempo run in on Sunday (since I did the long run scheduled for Sunday on Saturday), but my shins were REALLY sore after the long run (still having those obscenely painful stabbing pains in places), so, as much as I'm itching to start putting in 40 mile weeks, I decided the best thing was to stay off my feet today and rest. After all, I'm in pretty decent half marathon shape already (thanks to the 10K Summer Tour), and still have 10 weeks to go. :)