Spring is Busting Out All Over! (Eugene Half Week 2 of 8)

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 3

You guys it's like the time changed and suddenly it's summer 🌞🌞🌞😎😎😎💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻. Or at least some semblance of spring. How lovely to procrastinate one's afternoon run until 5:30 or 6:00pm and not have to worry about the light. Simply marvelous.

AND AND AND it's been kinda sorta warm-ish here??? Or like 65ºF-ish at least??? Honestly when it's 65ºF and full sun, we call it summer and live it up.

The view from Tuesday's run through Golden Gate Park

 ~*~*~ 🦆🦆 Eugene Half Marathon Week 2 of 8 🦆🦆 ~*~*~

Grand Total: 43 miles

🐌 Easy: 38.5 miles
🏃🏻‍♀️ Moderate: 0 miles
🐎 Fast: 4.5 miles

⚖️ Easy miles vs. fast/moderate miles: 89.5% vs. 10.5%. 

Blue = daily strain, red/yellow/green = daily recovery

Monday 3/11: a.m. strength. Very happy I had only lifting on the schedule today -- I woke up feeling Not Great and with a 32% recovery score & was more than happy to just relax on the couch and recover for my hill sprints the next day.

Tuesday 3/12: 10 easy w/ 10 x 1:00 hill sprints 8 easy. Oooops, I woke up with yet another low recovery scores (32% again) and man, I was feeling it. Just so exhausted & legs still pretty trashed from lifting. Instead I opted for an easy 8, which ended up being more strain than usual, I can only assume because of my poor recovery.

But hey, an excuse to mention these shoes which I am loving! 

I thought it was cold this day. I was wrong. 😅

I don't think I've owned a pair of ASICS since 2010, but multiple trusted sources had mentioned that the ASICS Novablast 3 had become one of their favorite sort of daily workhorse shoes of 2023. The model was on its way out so I scoured the internet for a super discounted pair to try out. 

A lot of times I shy away from the more cushioned, higher stack trainers, but this one felt sooooo comfortable right out of the box, especially for recovery days where I wanted to baby my feet a little. The shoe fit the shape of my foot really nicely, and--this is a big one for me--there was plenty of room in the toe box. (Why do so many brands make such tiny toe boxes???) I probably wouldn't wear them for anything else but super easy running (too squishy for workouts/racing), but for easy/recovery runs, they are *great*. I promptly bought two more super discounted pairs! 

I am still seeing them around the internet for under $100 in multiple places so depending on your size, it might not be too late.

Wednesday 3/13: 10 easy w/ 10 x 1:00 hill sprints. Or, as I've come to think of it, "the shortest longest workout." Friends, I absolutely hate hill sprints. Or "sprint" is maybe not the right word but still--very short, hard intervals at say ~90% effort. For all that they are super short, one minute feels like a verrrry long time when you're running uphill at ~90%. I think I might actually prefer race pace 2K / 2 mile repeats. Then again I feel like super hating a certain type of workout might actually be a good clue that it's exactly the kind of workout you need to be doing. 🤣

Thursday 3/14: 7 easy. Summertime, summertime, sum sum summertime summertime summertime summertime yeeeeaaaahh. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers this little jingle from the PBS ads of my childhood.)

Also my good friend's birthday, so we obviously had to have thematic Pi Day dessert. 🥧😋

Friday 3/15: Rest. In a lot of ways, this had been a pretty stressful week, so I was happy for this rest day.

Saturday 3/16: 4 easy. I knew I was either going to do my long run today or Sunday; when I woke up with a 45% recovery score, I decided to keep it short & cross my fingers for Sunday.

Sunday 317: 4 warm up, 6 x (800m fast/800m jog), 4 cool down = 14 total. (Though apparently I got "off" with my watch at some point, so it was running when I wasn't and vice versa, which meant I arrived home with 1.4 miles missing and three extra minutes of standing around. Whatever, here's your extra 1.4 missing miles. Still, another gorgeous day for a run! Trying to enjoy the heck out of it before the rain returns.

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• The Teacher by Freida McFadden. Addie, a high school student (who is already having a tough time thanks to the death of alcoholic father last year), starts her junior year a pariah because of her involvement in a beloved older math teacher’s firing the previous spring. We cut back and forth between her story and the story of a moderately troubled married couple–Eve (Addie’s cold, calculating, shoe-obsessed math teacher) and Nate (her warm, compassionate, poetry-obsessed English teacher). We are then treated to the interactions between all of them. My experience of reading this book went something like: Boring boring boring boring boring boring boring gross gross gross boring boring gross predictable boring boring gross gross gross predictable gross gross gross predictable predictable predictable oh wow one gross thing I actually didn’t see coming. Usually when there are so many outrageous clichés operating simultaneously in a book, it means something fresh and twisty is coming soon. Not here, though.
• All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership by Darcy Lockman. Two-thirds of the way through, I decided this book should be required reading for any heterosexual person who is considering getting into a long-term household partnership & reproducing. Also probably if you're already there (assuming you have time to read a book). Especially if you're kind of mad about it. Especially if you're the dude. Especially if you're the dude & you're like, "Oh we're great, things are super equal in our household!" If you're the lady, be prepared to want to throw things in recognition. I also learned from this book that beliefs about gender equity among the 18-35s, particularly re: roles in household/parenting partnerships, peaked in 1994 & have either stayed flat or regressed ever since. Anecdotally this doesn't surprise me but it's still pretty upsetting.
• How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key. I SWEAR I am not contemplating divorce, but as the child of a pretttty not-nice divorce, I do have a weird attraction to all the divorce (or near-divorce/marital strife) memoirs that are making the rounds lately. This one actually does not end in divorce, but it chronicles the absolutely wild journey that Harrison and Lauren went on in their marriage, only very narrowly escaping divorce. I had complicated feelings about this book, but it was both incredibly earnest and moving and also hilarious, which is I'm sure the only way to get through writing about something so deeply personal and painful.
• The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. An Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel seeks his dreamed-of fortune at the Egyptian pyramids. His quest leads him across the desert and to adventures with a range of interesting characters, including the eponymous Alchemist. Very bildungsroman. A bit naïve perhaps but a classic for a reason.