Tempting Fate... (Kaiser Half Week 1 of 13)

God I'm terrified to start posting training logs again. It seems there is no better way to attract the universe's attention (in a bad way). 😅

Anyway, now that I have a half marathon mark on the board, it's time to count down to the next one--that old Golden Gate Park classic, Kaiser Permanente (which is actually officially called The San Francisco Half Marathon but that gets easily confused with the San Francisco Marathon First and Second Half Marathons, so pretty much everyone I know just calls it Kaiser Half after the headline sponsor). It's reasonably priced, super close to home, has a reliable and good-enough course, and we always have a good contingent from the team running. (Also one of my teammates is one of the race directors so it's nice to support her.)

I'll have 13 weeks to prepare myself, though a big chunk of those weeks will involve work and holiday travel, which tends to disrupt organized for-real training. Still planning to do whatever I can do, though, with a very loose goal of dipping under 1:50 in the worst case and under 1:45 in the best case.

 ~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 1 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~

Grand Total:  37.5 miles

🐌 Easy:  21.8 easy
🐎 Speed:  2.5 miles
🏅 Race: 13.2 miles

Monday 11/6: Rest.

Tuesday 11/7: a.m. strength + p.m 2 easy to the gym, 30:00 easy elliptical, 2 home = 4 total. This has become my typical easy recovery activity.

Wednesday 11/8: 6 easy.

Thursday 11/9: 1.5 warm up, 8 x 1:00 fast/1:00 jog, 1.5 cool down = 5 total. Nothing too serious, just starting to work on getting some turnover.

Friday 11/10: 4 easy.

Saturday 11/11: 3 easy + 4 x strides = 3.5 total. Shaking it out before Clarksburg. 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻

Sunday 11/12: Clarksburg Half Marathon! 1 mile warm up, 13.2 race, 0.8 cool down = 15 total.

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia. Sort of an interesting premise, but to be honest I had a hard time getting into it. I had a hard time following parts of it because it just did not hold my attention and I often found myself having to stop and back it up five or ten minutes because I'd lost track of what was going on.

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I've been meaning to get to this book for a while! It was good and I enjoyed it, though it was quite dark and serious, and there were parts of it I felt could have been edited more effectively.

• Too Scary, Didn't Watch (podcast). I recently discovered this podcast and it's great. In each episode, the hosts have a guest or two on to recap a scary movie in service to those who would really like to watch scary movies in theory but not so much in practice. This week I listened to episodes about Cube, Friday the 13th, and The Wicker Man. There is an extensive back catelogue and I am into it. 

• Bundyville (podcast). If you want to feel utterly terrible about the world. 😬 But honestly it's a very well done pod.

• Search Engine (podcast). P.J. Vogt's relatively new podcast. I feel like he has grown up since Reply All, which is refreshing. I've listened to several episodes and they've all been very rich and thoughtfully done.