Eugene Half Taper Pt 2 (Eugene Half Week 8 of 8) Apr 22-28

OMG you guys. Work and life. They've been absurd lately. YES I am still out here running and racing but have not had the spare time or bandwidth to write about it. 😂 So here is the *final* installment of my Eugene Half training cycle and maybe one of these weeks I'll actually get the race report published too.

In case you missed it:

Eugene Half Week 1
Eugene Half Week 2
Eugene Half Week 3
Eugene Half Week 4
Eugene Half Week 5
Eugene Half Week 6
Eugene Half Week 7

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

Grand Total: 33.07 miles

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

Monday 4/22: 6 easy. Back in Week 7, these easy six were supposed to get done on Sunday, but we were traveling that weekend and my time that day was such that I would have had to do it before 7am or after 9pm, which, sorry, not happening. Normally Monday would be my rest day so basically I just ended up swapping Sunday and Monday.

Tuesday 4/23: 2.25 warm up, 5 x (800m @ HM effort / 2:00 jog), 2 cool down = 7.7 total. This run felt okaayyyyy, not as easy as I would hope ~7:40 pace would feel, particularly given that I had such a high recovery score that day, but not terrible.

Wednesday 4/24: 4 easy. Here's the down side re: writing your training logs two weeks late and that's that you can't always remember everything that happened or didn't. I have no memory of why I skipped this run but Strava seems pretty clear that it didn't happen, so 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Thursday 4/25: 3.5 + 5 x 100m strides = 4.6 total. Just some easy running with a few strides thrown in.

Friday 4/26: Rest/Don's birthday dinner with friends 🥳 🎂🎈🎁 🥂

Saturday 4/27: 30:00 easy + 4 x 100m strides = 3.5 total. Get up hella early and fly to Eugene! I finally had this realization that if you can't get your shakeout run done reasonably early in the day, it's probably actually better not to bother. I would have had to do it before heading the airport, but I would have had to get up extra early and I *really* wanted to get some extra sleep.

Sunday 4/28: Eugene Half! 1.6 warm up + 13.1 race.

🎧In my ears this week:🎧

• The Hunter by Tana French. Sequel to The Searcher. Follow-up to The Searcher from a few years back. Retired Chicago cop and expat Cal Hooper is settling into his quiet life in rural Ireland, mostly restoring furniture and being a stable adult presence of 15-year-old Trey (who he befriended a few years earlier in The Searcher). But when Trey's long-gone father reappears with a sketchy Brit looking for gold, Trey's desire for revenge for the death of her older brother (a major thread of The Searcher) is reignited, and it's all Cal can do to save her from herself without alienating her. HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE TANA FRENCH.
• Barbell Medicine: When Going to the Gym Goes Wrong Parts #1 & #2. Barbell Medicine (hosted by two doctors who lift) is one of my new podcast favorites! These episodes involved stories where one host described a case in which someone arrived at the doctor/hospital with some injury or problem they'd sustained while doing exercise, and the other tried to figure out from the case details what had actually gone wrong medically. Fascinating stuff.
• The Truth About the Devlins by Lisa Scottoline. TJ is the black sheep of the prominent Devlin family. While the rest of the Devlins are successful lawyers, ex con and recovering alcoholic TJ only has a job because his parents pay him as an "investigator" at their firm. Then one night TJ's brother John confesses to TJ in a panic that he's murdered a client and begs for TJ's help. TJ sees a chance to prove his worth and save his brother, but what he learns as he investigates the crime might tear his family apart first. Not life-changing but entertaining.