Three weeks to go until Kaiser SF Half! Honestly when I signed up for this race I'd been of the mindset that it would be kind of a rust-buster, just a way to start the year off with some motivation to do some for-real training. But other than the few weeks in December when I was out of commission, I've been pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of training I've been able to put in and am honesty feeling pretty curious and excited to see what the race brings.
As a reminder I ran 1:53:57 at Clarksburg in November, which is a pretty low bar in terms of showing some progress. I think sub-1:50 is extremely realistic unless I have a really bad day or bad pre-race week and around 1:45ish is not unreasonable. Can I beat Clarksburg by a full ten minutes? That would be awesome but who can say! And really anything faster than that would be absolute gravy.
(But also, I am trying not to get *overly* optimistic--all I can do is continue to train smart, then show up and do my best on the day, and if I do those things, then whatever happens will be good enough.)
(But then, at the same time, I have to remind myself that I ran 1:56:05 at Kaiser in 2022, knowing that I was in not-great shape and mostly just trying to finish, and then six weeks later ran 1:40:57 at Oakland Half freaking out of the blue. So hey, sometimes magic happens, folks.)
In other exciting news this week, a multi-year dream was accomplished with the installation of this sweet shoe rack in the garage:
#Levelingup
This is mainly important because it gets stinky running shoes (at least those in the regular daily rotation) out of our indoor living space. 😂 So now I go in and out of the garage for running, and the shoes never have to come inside at all. Living the dream, amirite.
~*~*~ 🎡 🎡 Kaiser Permanente Half Week 10 of 13 🎡 🎡 ~*~*~
Grand Total: 42.3 miles
🐌 Easy: 28 miles
🏃🏻♀️ Moderate: 9.8 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles
⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 66.2% vs. 33.8%. Definitely an unusually big week for quality miles!
Lots of days in the yellow this week but finally starting to trend upward after a rest day:
Monday 1/8: 1:20 easy bike (16.6 miles).
Tuesday 1/9: a.m. strength + p.m. 2 warm up, 4 x 800m @ 10K effort/200m jog, 7 x 200m fast/200m jog, 2 cool down = 8.5 total. (This was supposed to be 8 x 200m but apparently I miscounted, OOPS.) Normally I don't do speed work on Tuesdays anymore because I have strength in the morning and sometimes that really just takes my legs out of the equation for a couple days for anything more than easy jogging. But there was not really a choice this week since I had to move my long run from Saturday to Sunday. Thankfully lifting wasn't too bad this morning, so I felt sort of 60/40 okay. Just not great. Legs did not feel super peppy and struggled to run fast 200ms. (These were mostly 0:46-47 which is pretty slow for me.) Ah well, got it done (with the exception of one 200m, d'oh) & tomorrow is another day.
Wednesday 1/10: 6 easy. Oof I was so sore. 😅 Lifting and speed in one day is kind of a lot.
Thursday 1/11: 2 warm up, 5 x 1 mile @ faster than HM pace/2:00 jog, 2 cool down = 9.8 total. Still feeling a little sore but much better than Wednesday. A lot of times with workouts like this I'll do a longer warm-up / cool-down, like 2.5-3 miles, but I had three workouts on the schedule this week so I was not trying to add extra mileage. I really didn't know what to expect pace-wise but I know I ran 8:37 pace for my November half marathon, so I thought, hey, if I can run ~8:00ish pace and that feels about right, that will already be a huuuuuge improvement. I knew the first rep (slightly uphill) would be the slowest so an 8:10 split was more than fine with me, and they only got faster from there.
(Note that the last, significantly faster rep was the same stretch as the first slower rep going the other way, so I feel like the effort level was probably pretty consistent across all five.)
I don't know exactly but I would say the effort I was running was probably somewhere in between tempo and half marathon pace, and honestly, that is a pretty sweet spot for just having fun if you only have to do it for a mile at a time. 😅 (I think it is when I get to 10K effort that mile reps start to feel hard and this was definitely slower than that.) Last week's 1.5 mile intervals had felt good to start with but then very quickly started to feel much harder while also getting a bit slower; this week the pace/effort felt great the whole time, and I felt like I could have even run another rep or two if I had to with no problem, so if that means fitness is improving, I will gladly take it.
This is apparently my new favorite photo spot on my usual route to GG Park
Friday 1/12: 4 easy Rest. After a workout every other day this week (and another one the next day), I was pretty tired and decided to swap this easy run with Sunday's rest day.
Saturday 1/13: 1514 long w/ 6 x (4:00 ~4ish miles @ HM effort/2:00 easy). I rarely run long runs with the WVTC team because the pace is often not what counts as "easy" for me these days 😅. But we had our team meeting on Saturday morning and I was supposed to do some running at HM effort, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to actually be able to run a bit with the group. Those of us planning to run longer met early to do a four-mile loop, then the entire group headed off into Golden Gate Park for various distances. I don't really know what my HM pace is right now but those second four felt about right (at least, good chunks of them), and after that I split off from the group to jog the last seven easy (though, thanks to some hills I wasn't expecting, I only had time to get to 14 before we needed to be back for the meeting). But in any case, a solid long run with some at least *close* to HM effort miles, so calling it good for the day.
Sunday 1/14: Rest 4 easy. Legs were tired and definitely feeling it! I could have completely justifiably stopped at 38.3 this week and taken a rest day, but I felt pretty good after this short easy run so I think it was fine, actually.
🎧In my ears this week:🎧
- What Lies Between Us by John Marrs. Oof this was a dark ass book. It’s maybe not that unusual for an adult mother and daughter to live together, but it is perhaps a bit more unusual for a daughter to keep her mother chained in the house while the outside world all believe she’s gone to live in a care home after a stroke. We learn chapter by chapter what Maggie has done to deserve this treatment from Nina–as well as the secrets she still keeps from her daughter, and why.
- The Family Game by Catherine Steadman. British novelist Harriet Reed is newly engaged to Edward, heir and scion of the Holbecks, descended from a legendary robber baron contemporaneous with the Carnegies and Morgans of the early 20th century. Though Edward had been somewhat estranged from the family, the engagement and Harriet’s move to the US has the family inching back into his (and Harriet’s) life. But one red flag after another has Harriet on edge about joining the family, including a grisly holiday tradition, a revelation about a family tragedy, and Edward’s father giving her a tape recording which seems to be a murder confession. Now Harriet is beginning to worry if joining this strange, immensely powerful family may come with much higher stakes than she realized.
- You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith. Renown poet Maggie Smith (you may have read/heard of her most well known poem "Good Bones") tells an introspective and reflective story about the disintegration of her marriage and subsequently doubling down on herself. Ostensibly the story is a memoir but through the pages what we're ultimately treated to is a larger interrogation of some of the biggest themes that underlie marriage and honestly all of society, including family, work, and patriarchy.
- The Guest House by Robin Morgan-Bentley. With just a few weeks to go before the due date of their first child, Jamie and Victoria take off for a long weekend at a country guest house operated by a retired couple. But the next morning the couple find themselves locked in the guest house, their phones and car keys missing--and Victoria going into early labor. When the guest house owners return, it becomes clear they have their own plans for Jamie and Victoria's child. The story cuts back and forth between the trip/birth and immediate aftermath, and the months that follow.
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