Week In Review: Sept 12 - 18

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. :)

8 Weeks to Clarksburg Half Marathon

11 Weeks to Cal International Marathon

Monday: 6 miles easy. This was a pretty good run except for the uphill sections, which I ran a little too fast. Which is also par for the course. I need to make sure to keep easy days *truly* easy.

Tuesday: 6.5 miles (2 wu + 6 x 800 @ 10K pace w/ 400 recoveries) Even though I had a good speed workout last Tuesday, it was still kind of a psychic relief to have a good 800s workout after the shit-storm two weeks ago. (There was no actual shit involved...I am learning that on running blogs, it is important to specify this whenever there could be a question.) I was working pretty hard by the end but got every single 800 in right at 3:40, which, when you account for the headwind on the backstretch, is about 10K-pace-ish.

(I feel like I type "the headwind on the backstretch" so much that it should get its own name. Maybe I'll start calling it Carl.)

Thursday: 9 miles (2 wu + 7 @ MP) Got it done at a 7:55 pace, but did NOT feel good after. When it comes to strength work, lunges are kind of like my arch nemesis, and Wednesday night, I did lunges for the first time in many, many weeks. Although I didn't do all that many, I clearly I over-did it; my hamstrings and glutes felt like rocks going into the run (and not in a good way), and afterwards they felt like hamburger meat. I see a lot of stretching and foam rolling in my future

Friday: 4 easy REST. There's residual soreness, and then there's the hurtin' sort of pain that makes you walk funny. I have a rule about not attempting to run when I can't even walk normally. (Also, some crazy shin pain today that's making me a bit nervous.)

Saturday: 8 miles (3 wu + 5 HMP) Pretty psyched that I didn't get kicked off the track for a soccer game today. (For the record, I'm not categorically anti-soccer; only when it unexpectedly interferes with my running!) Same average pace (7:37 / mile, with wind) and heart rate (189 bpm) as last Saturday's HMP run, but definitely easier mentally. In fact, it felt positively easy...Then again, I suppose if HMP doesn't feel easy after only five miles, you're in trouble. I haven't run a half in nearly a year, and didn't wear a heart rate monitor in that one, so I have no idea what kind of heart rate I can expect to maintain for 90-100 minutes. I feel like 188 is a pretty good estimate, at least for the first ten miles; I may go with that & then just kill it for the last 5K. My shins were still pretty painful after, but while I was running they felt completely fine, which I guess is at least not a bad sign.

Sunday: 14 miles easy. This is the farthest I've run in nearly a year. Other than a head-on collision with a cyclist (seriously; she actively swerved into me when, as far as I could tell, there was nothing for her to be swerving around; the farther out of her way I tried to get, the farther she served) and an irritated tendon near my left ankle, it went pretty well. I ran most of the miles in the 8:50's and negative split the whole thing; plus, I got my first Gu practice in, which I'll be posting about shortly. :) On the other hand, my body feels pretty trashed as I write this (about an hour post-run), so I'll probably be taking the next two days completely off to make sure everything's kosher. It's a cut-back week anyway so whatevs.

Grand Total: 43.5 miles

Getting there. :)