Week in Review: Jan 30 - Feb 5

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. :)

2 Weeks to Bay Breeze 10K

7 Weeks to Oakland Half Marathon

Monday: 4 easy + karate + strength work. Boy, do rest days make all the difference! Yes, it was a short run, but still one of those rare workouts where I feel like I'm bounding effortlessly along and everything is working the way it's supposed to. (More of these, please?)

Tuesday: 2 wu + 4 x 5:00 @ 5K pace + 1 cd 2 wu + 3 x 1 mi @ HM pace + 1 cd = 6 total. I just could not get going today. When I finally did make it to the track, it was closed for a soccer game. Long story short, I find running at 5K pace on sidewalks dangerous & scary, so I swapped that day with Friday's HMP intervals. Even so, this was just one of those days when I was #notfeelingit. The weather was crappy, I was wearing a cotton sweatshirt (this is how you can tell my brain wasn't in charge), carrying a water bottle, and kind of needed to pee. After 1.5 warm-up miles I kind of went, "Ah, screw it. Six easy & call it good." I stopped after 2 anyway to have some water and loosen up my legs. When I started running again, though, something sort of magical happened. "Oh, who am I kidding?" I sighed to myself. "I love running fast."

Race pace intervals are always a little tricky off the track because of hills, wind, traffic, pedestrians, etc., so I wasn't too worried about exactly nailing it & was fully prepared for my pace to be a little slower than it should really be. I was surprised to see that my first mile was 7:44 because the whole thing was uphill (maybe a 3-4% grade). Coming back, I expected the reverse mile to be faster (which, at 7:24, it was). The last involved a bit of tricky terrain, plus more pedestrians & lights & a few small up-hills, so back to 7:42.

I know that one thing I really have to work on with HM pace in general is not going out too fast. When I'm slogging through my easy miles in the 8:45-9:15 range, 7:38 sounds wicked fast; as a result, I inevitably end up going out like that, suddenly realizing I'm running sub-7s, & having to rein it back in. I've been trying to err more on the side of going out a little on the slow side (which is what I should be practicing for races anyway), because I find it easier to speed up by a few seconds per mile than to ratchet back down.

Wednesday: No running; karate + strength work.

Thursday: 8 easy. Just an easy jog in the park. Well; sort of easy. Maybe a touch fast for "easy," especially considering all the hills & the lovely 70 F weather. But still good. :)

Friday: 2 wu + 4 x 5:00 @ 5K pace + .17 cd = 5 total. In terms of pace, my intervals went 7:10, 7:08, 7:03, 6:58. That combined with the fact that they really all just seemed too easy makes me think I need to push these a little more and that maybe I'm ready to start doing more intervals sooner than I thought I would be. I am always too conservative in the beginning because I don't want to go out too fast & end up too tired to manage even/negative splits (which is generally my goal), but I really shouldn't be able to go THAT much faster from interval to interval. In terms of running problems to have, though, this is probably an okay one. (And yes, I had to jog a last .17 to make it a nice round number!)

Saturday: 5 easy. By which I mean VERY easy. I know I have a habit of running my easy runs too fast; there are some reasons for that, none of which are very good ones, and also some not-so-great consequences that maybe I will blog about later. Today I challenged myself to run 5 miles without breaking a sweat. While I didn't quite succeed, just having that idea in my mind helped me keep things nice & slow.

Sunday: 12 miles easy + strength work. My longest run post-CIM! I felt a little sluggish until around mile 4 & had a bit of asthma for maybe 2-7ish (have I mentioned how *over* the asthma thing I am?), but the last half was great. Negative splits, basically no pain anywhere, & ran the last two sub-8:40.

Grand Total: 40 miles

No complaints this week. Shooting for mid-40s for next week, but it's going to be kind of a busy one so we'll see what I can fit in.