New Balance Bronx 10 Mile: Training Week 6 Recap
Taper-ish
I'm in that weird point where I'm a little bit in taper because I did my longest run already, but I still have one tempo run to go, so I'm not fully in taper. Taper will be coming soon. Probably sooner than expected, actually. Because life.
Also, I usually take notes during the week so that I know what to write in these recaps. I didn't so much do that this week. So this will be either very short or entirely made up.
Monday - Rosh Hashanah, Day 1
- Running: None
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Ate okay, not great.
- Life: Rest Day #1. Spent the morning at services ... was a little tired, but otherwise okay. Took a nice afternoon nap.
Tuesday - Rosh Hashanah, Day 2
- Running: None
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Did not eat okay.
- Life/Work: So, last year the day before Rosh Hashanah I bought two new pairs of heels, and I wore those shoes on the two days of Rosh Hashanah and was fine. Planned to do the same thing this year (the same shoes, not new shoes). Was fine in my navy pumps the first day, but wore my brown heels on the second day and couldn't stand in them. My left ankle kept rolling out. I had to wear my mom's sneakers. I haven't had problems in those shoes before, so I'm really nervous that something is wrong with my leg. We'll see what happens. Stress level 10 ... but I only wore my watch for a few hours.
Wednesday
- Running: None
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Did not eat all the chocolates at work. Did not eat anything at work ... I was fasting. Fast ended around 7:45, and I was actually okay after that - didn't do the post-fast binge that I sometimes do. Nice.
- Work/Life: Meh. Not being able to drink water at work is hard. I was a little grouchy and a little headache-y all day, but I took out my contacts when my eyes started to hurt and I survived. I'm pretty sure nobody noticed that I was gone for two days. Stress level 12 ... I didn't have the energy for a higher stress level.
Thursday
- Running: 1 mi WU + 20 minutes 10K + 1+ mi CD - 4.01 miles, 48:08 minutes, 12:00 min/mi avg pace
- Tempo was originally scheduled for Friday (this was supposed to be 4 miles EC), but I switched because I didn't want to tempo on the treadmill (Friday was a 5am treadmill run).
- I've started tracking my tempo by time instead of mileage because I set up the workouts by time (x repeats of intervals of 2 mins running and 30 seconds recovery/walking), and while theoretically that should correspond to the right number of miles, it doesn't because I'm slow.
- 10K pace was about a minute slow. I struggled a lot. I think I forgot how long it takes me to recover from fast days. This tempo was scheduled for Friday for a reason. I cannot do tempo the day after fast days.
- Stopped for a few minutes in mile 1 to vote in the NYS primaries. Yay democratic process! I gotta remember this situation when making the marathon plan ... no matter where I'm living, I'll have to be in Queens on election day because that's where I'm registered to vote.
- Cross Training: barre3, 1:00:45 hours
- Instructor was the studio manager, Dino. Last time I had him I was unsure how I felt about his penchant for 4-letter words. I don't know if he used fewer such words this time or if I just didn't notice them, but I really liked his class.
- Went into class a little bit murder-y because of work. Didn't think I had it in me to push myself. Somehow ended up doing almost all of the hardest levels of everything ... that one hit me by surprise. But it was a pleasant surprise. Exactly what I needed.
- Food: Ate all the chocolates. I didn't really want chocolate, I wanted iced coffee, but I didn't want to leave the building, so I had to settle for what was there.
- Life/Work: Work was okay but ended badly. AM weight was very low (it's the "day after a fast" effect), so I started off in a decent mood, but it was mostly an unexceptional day. My scrum master was back after missing two weeks post-surgery (she broke her foot ... can't run the half she was gonna run in October), so it was nice to see her. Stress level 21.
Friday
- Running: 3.5 mi EC (Treadmill) - 3.51 miles, 41:27 minutes, 11:48 min/mi avg pace
- Originally scheduled as 1 mi WU + 2 mi 10K + 0.5 mi CD (3.5 total mi), but since I did tempo on Thurs, I did this as 3.5 mi EC on the treadmill.
- I wanted to leave for work around 7:15ish, so I wanted to be done with this run around 6ish, which meant starting by 5:15. I actually didn't start until 5:23, so I was a little behind schedule. Went a drop fast just to get it done.
- I woke up in the middle of a dream where I was trying to be quiet on the treadmill so as to not wake up my family. So I tried to be quiet on the treadmill. I wore my lighter shoes, even though I had worn them the day before and I don't love them on the treadmill. I kept the volume on the TV low. Watched the end of Legally Blonde and then a rerun of PM SportsCenter. Wasn't in love with either one. Just a blah run overall.
- I realized that I hate the 5am wakeups. They do not work for me. I want to limit myself to at most two 5am wakeups a week starting in October, and since one of those may be Friday (because I get to work early so that I can leave early and I do my hair before work), I will have to figure out how I want to balance running less and getting to work later. I will definitely need to do a little of both. But I have some time to figure it out.
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Probably bad.
- Life/Work: Weight was down. Good commute. Got to work early. Work was meh because things were slow so I couldn't do everything I needed to do. But mostly fine. Stress level 32. Saw a picture of the Staten Island Half medal on my way home from work. I think it's the ferry. I like it. The post-race Ferry photoshoot will be interesting ... trying to decide if I'm willing to ride the ferry multiple times to make sure I get the good pictures. #Millenial
Staten Island Half Marathon Medal (October 14th):
Saturday
- Running: None
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Meh
- Life: Life was life. Nothing much happened. Went to bed late because I was watching Pitch Perfect 3 on the HBO West Coast feed. Stress level 12.
Sunday
- Running: 6.5 mi Easy/LR intervals - 6.54 miles, 1:27:09 hours, 13:19 min/mi avg pace
- This was scheduled for 7 miles, but after the late bedtime, I woke up later, and then I just wasn't in the mood. I decided to do whatever felt right ... it felt right to turn around at 3 miles and then plan to do a loop around the ballfields to get in a little extra distance. All things considered, this was a decent run and I'm happy with it.
- Miles 1,3, and 5 were over 13 min/mi. Miles 2 and 4 were not. I was expecting mile 6 to be in the 12s like 2 and 4 ... but it was 14:08. I'm weird.
- Had some pain in my left leg. I'm really starting to wonder if something is wrong. I hope not. It's two weeks to race day ... ain't nobody got time for injuries. Sigh.
- Cross Training: None
- Food: Not great. Probably ate too much. Don't really care. Drinking my last Coney Island Mermaid Pilsner right now ... I gotta figure out what I want to get next, but since I don't know when my brother will have time to go to the beer store, I don't know when I need to figure that out. Sigh.
- Life: Started off as a pretty good day. Some stress later in the day. Stress level 26, which seems low, since I was wearing my Garmin while dealing with the treadmill (see below).
- Spent some time trying to figure out how I want to set up the data fields on my Garmin for my race (I created a separate activity called "Race" where I will have all these settings so that I don't have to mess around with my regular run settings). I'm trying to find a good race predictor and/or pace-band-like thing, but so far nothing I liked. I tried that Race Screen data field some people seem to like and it just didn't feel right to me ... the info is good, but it's not what I want. Right now I have one screen that just gives me time, distance, average pace, and time of day (which is fairly similar to the first screen on my regular run), but I feel like I want one or two more metrics, I just don't know if I know what. I dunno. I gotta keep trying things. (Also, somehow all my widgets got messed up and I just noticed and now I have to fix it ... sigh)
- Lubricated the treadmill, which was harder than I thought but fine, but then wanted to realign it because it was off a little and I overcorrected and there was a giant mess involved in fixing it. Very stressful and frustrating.
Overall Week Stats:
Running: 3 runs, 14.06 miles, 2:56:44 hours, 12:34 min/mi avg pace
Barre3: 1 class, 1:00:45 hours
Weight: Down 0.5 lb from last Sunday (yay!), but also up quite a bit from earlier in the week. I have another fast on Wednesday, so the key for this week will be to figure out how to keep the post-fast weight loss.
I'm currently scheduled for my last tempo run on Tuesday, but I have to leave mad early on Tuesday, so I want to get to work early, so I'm thinking that instead of 5am treadmilling again, I'll run tomorrow (but Sarah, what about no Mondays???) and take Tuesday as another rest day. Yom Kippur (another religious observance day, also a fast day) on Wednesday, 3 miles EC on Thursday, and 5 mi Easy/LR intervals on Sunday. And then it's race week!
I'm currently scheduled for barre3 on Monday and Thursday, and barring anything new coming up, I will likely go to both ... unless I decide to take one night to go shopping after work because I need shoes and dresses. Sigh.
I can probably start checking weather pretty soon ... not that I have any idea what I want to wear, other than maybe a "Boogie Down Bronx" theme (I'm not entirely sure what that means, just btw). Thinking about maybe doing a Yankees theme for the Staten Island Half, but not sure how I'd do it, since I keep not buying the Yankees running headband when I go to Trenton, and I didn't see it at the Stadium or in Staten Island. I suck.
On Expiration Dates and Unfinished Business
For a long time, I had an expiration date on my running. Not like "I have to stop running on January 5th, 2021" expiration date, but more like I knew that when I hit a certain stage of my life, I wouldn't be running anymore. For reasons I'm not comfortable discussing (I know I overshare a lot, but there are some things I just can't talk about), that's not really a factor anymore. And I think not having that expiration date was a contributing factor to all the running-related stress I've been experiencing lately. I never wanted to be someone who runs until she can't run anymore. I know many people do that and that's awesome for them, and I will be there screaming and cheering the whole time, but ... that's not who I am. And not knowing when that end was going to come was a little stressful.
I have an expiration date now ... but not entirely. I realized last week that it's either NYC Marathon 2019 or Coast-to-Coast, whichever comes later (meaning that if C2C comes back in 2019, I'll do it then and NYC marathon will be my last distance race*, but if it doesn't, I'll keep training for distance until C2C comes back). But that's just for distance running. As of right now, I will probably continue to run 3-5 miles 2-3 times per week, and maybe run the occasional 5K or even 10K if something interesting comes up (*cough*Rangerstown*cough*), but after that expiration date, I think I want to stop running longer distances.
But ... unfinished business. I want to do more runDisney. I want to run in cities all over the world. How can I do that if I stop running?
But I realized today that while I would enjoy those things, I don't have to do all those things. I have to get a C2C. I'm not sure I want to, but I have to run NYC. But other races ... if I get to do them, awesome, but if not, not. So the way I see it ... if I have the opportunity to register for a half that interests me, then I'll train for that race. And when that race is over, I'll go back to shorter distances. Just because I'm not always training for distance doesn't mean I can't occasionally train for distance.
So ... that's what's been up with me and what's been going through my head for the last week.