Back to Work (John Frank 10 Miler Week 1 of 4)

...And we're back at it. Next up on the schedule is John Frank Memorial 10 Miler in Redding in March 2, with the longer-term goal being the Eugene Half on April 28. (Did I mention I signed up for the Eugene Half? I signed up for the Eugene Half! #peerpressure). 

JFM10 is a PA race so I'm mostly doing that as a club thing. The course is a bit hilly so I think a PR (sub 1:16:45) is unlikely, but even if it's not particularly fast, it'll still be a good workout and a good chance to race double digits before Eugene.

This week was mostly about just getting back in the swing of things, plus a 48-hour work trip to Orlando:

 ~*~*~ 🌁 🌁 John Frank Memorial 10 Miler 1 of 4 🌁 🌁 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 42 miles

🐌 Easy: 33 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 4 miles
🐎 Fast: 5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 78.6% vs. 21.4%. 

Guess which day was my first full day of jet lag.

Monday 2/5: a.m. strength.

Tuesday 2/6: 6 easy. And we're back! Honestly the way I felt on Tuesday is the way I always hope to feel on race day: light, bouncy, with strong gritty legs that just feel like going fast. 🤣 Honestly I had to keep reminding myself to keep a lid on it given Wednesday's double digit workout. Kind of funny what happens when you train well, taper, & then don't actually race lol. 

Wednesday 2/7: 2 warm up, 4 x (1 mile @ tempo / 800m jog / 800m fast / 800m jog), 2 cool down = 13.5 total. OK I kind of messed this one up a little because I remembered the jogs as 800m but they were actually supposed to be 3:00 🤦🏻‍♀️. But honestly I did NOT feel good for most of this workout so I don't think a couple extra minutes of recovery time hurt particularly. Though the tempo bits were slower than usual, the right physical effort felt mentally good if that makes any sense. The "fast" 800ms though were anything but--I felt like I simply had no turnover in my legs, like I was running in lead boots. Days when you feel like you don't really "have it" are good ones to practice grinding, though, or at least that's what I decided to tell myself. 

Thursday 2/8: 4 easy + travel day! I arrived in Orlando with just enough time to squeeze in an easy four miles before dinner. I was really afraid given the car-centric nature of Orlando (at least the area where I am staying) that I would have to run on a hotel treadmill (the WORST, we can all agree) but I was pleased to find a quite pleasant, roughly 3-mile-long sidewalk loop adjacent to my hotel with only a couple of stop lights. Definitely feeling yesterday's 13.5 mile workout though 😵‍💫🥴🙃.

Friday 2/9: 8 easy 6 easy. Just jet-lagged (as usual on work trips) and short on time (also as usual on work trips) and honestly I'm just super happy I was able to get two runs done on this trip *at all*, and that I didn't have to do them on a treadmill.

#seenonmyrun

Saturday 2/10: Rest. Conference 1/2 day + fly home!

Sunday 2/11: 4 warm up, 6 x (800m fast/800m easy), 2.5 cool down = 12.5 total. I was happy to find that after catching up on sleep Saturday night, I felt good when I finally went out to run on Sunday. Still not feeling super peppy in the legs when I try to run faster than threshold pace, but otherwise felt strong & like I had plenty of endurance, and even the half-mile pickups got faster as I went.

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• Homecoming by Kate Morton. Journalist and Australian expat Jess is summoned back home when the beloved elderly grandmother who raised her, Nora, is hospitalized after a fall. While staying at Nora’s, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling the still-unsolved 1959 Turner Family Tragedy, in which a local man discovered a mother and two of her children on a Christmas Eve picnic mysteriously dead, the third child–an infant–missing. Between the pages, Jess discovers a connection to her own family history, and resolves to figure out the truth, regardless of what it means for her family. 
• Those Empty Eyes by Charlie Donlea. Ten years ago, 17-year-old Alex Quinlan was falsely arrested by incompetent police for murdering her parents and brother. Nicknamed “Empty Eyes” by the media for the blank, dazed look on her face when police walked her out of family home, the accusation destroyed her life and reputation, even though the charges were dropped months later. The case remains unsolved, but Alex–now a legal investigator with a new identity–hasn’t stopped trying to find her family’s killer. Then, while in the course of trying to help a young man under suspicion in the disappearance of his girlfriend, she stumbles upon evidence that suggests a connection to her family’s murder.
• The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett. A "found document" kind of book that obliquely documents the story of the somewhat washed up true crime writer Amanda Bailey attempting to pull together her own book about the somewhat historical "Alperton Angels" case--a cult brainwashed a teen girl into believing her baby was the anti-Christ, and all but one took their own lives when the girl came to her senses and called the police. Mother and baby disappeared thereafter, and on the eve of the missing "baby's" eighteenth birthday, Amanda is determined to find them and tell their story.

A pretty normalish week coming up, fingers crossed!