Spain Photo Dump + 4 Weeks to Giant Race 10K!

Hello, all! I'm back from my conference in Spain & catching up on training logs such as they are. Not a ton of running got done over these 12 days, but it wasn't zero running, and on the plus side, I took some cool photos.

*~*~The Giant Race 10K Week 4 of 9~*~*~

Grand Total: 22 miles

* 20 easy
* 2 speed

Monday 7/11: Rest

Tuesday 7/12: 1 hour strength + 8 easy errand run. My trainer was out so no strength on Tuesday, just a very draining "easy" eight miles that I tried to use to run some errands (mostly grocery shopping) because I had too much to do & not enough time to do it. 🙈 GODDD I was tired!

Wednesday 7/13: 2 warm up, 10 x 1:00 hill repeats/recovery jogs, 2 cool down = 8 total. I have no good hills for this sort of thing even remotely close to home. Sigh.

Thursday 7/14: 6 easy. I was kind of nuts getting ready to leave & just couldn't make this one happen.

Friday 7/15: On a plane! No running.

Saturday 7/16: 6 easy if jet-lagged miles around Parque El Retiro in Madrid. Madrid was triple digits the entire time I was there but the nice thing about jet-lag is that you're usually wide-awake by 5am. Okay 7am. In any case by 9:30 I was out the door and it was still relatively pleasant out, so I used the opportunity to jog around the park and stop for photos. The heat didn't get too bad but MAN I got so thirsty and spent so much of this run looking for water fountains & sprinklers to drink out of and/or run through.

Back to Spain + 7 Weeks to Giant Race!

Howdy partners! Week 3 of Giant Race 10K is in the books and it was a pretty good one, though I definitely had some moments of fatigue as I stacked two 40+ weeks together for the first time in a while. 

Iberia is once again calling my name, so I'll be flying back to Spain this coming Thursday for about 12 days or so. Actually it is a work conference that is calling my name. But if you have to go to a work conference, Spain is not the worst destination I can think of.

I am hoping to get in as much regular training while I'm there as possible; Coach has given me some dialed-back workouts and easy runs for most of the trip, so I'm planning to just do what I can, whenever I can. I do love combination running/sightseeing but considering it will be triple-digit highs, we'll have to see how feasible that is. 

40+ miles & feeling good + 8 Weeks to Giant Race!

Week 2 is in the books!

As I mentioned last week, the Road Warrior got back to #roadwarrioring this week with a five-day work trip to inland Southern California where it was 112F in the shade, BOOOO. 

In the past when I've been down there for this project I haven't usually pushed myself to complete workouts necessarily & mostly just tried to fit in whatever miles I could on the hotel treadmill. I have a lot of travel this summer, though, so I wanted to try my best to try to do the workouts as/when assigned. I know it can be done, it just takes a little more planning than I've sometimes had the bandwidth for in the past.

Carbon Plate Shoes I Have Known: Saucony Endorphin Pro

Hidey ho, friends, today we are continuing our discussion of carbon plate running shoes.

If you've been missing out, allow me to catch you up:

• Some background on why the heck carbon plate running shoes & where did they come from
• A little editorial about my experience running in the New Balance RC Elite carbon plate shoe

Today, another little editorial on the Saucony Endorphin Pro, Saucony's first foray into the carbon plate world. You can still get this version of the shoe at a few places at a significant discount though the available sizes are limited. The version 2 (extremely similar to version 1) is widely available and the version 3 (HELLA different) is coming soon. (A few shoe blogs and running stores have released their preliminary reviews.)

Why did I buy these shoes when I already had a pair of New Balance RC Elites? Three reasons, friends: