Monday Training Update: Week Ending 7/30
This was the plan for the week:
T - 4.5 miles @ EB + Strides
Th - 1 mile @ WU, 3 miles @ tempo, .5 mile @ CD
F - 4 miles @ EA
Sa - 8 miles @ long run
Tuesday was a beautiful day, and I wanted to run outside, but our kid had been sick all weekend, and was up several times overnight Monday in to Tuesday. I had to go in to the office for a couple of meetings, so we decided that I'd try to recoup an hour of sleep and then run on the treadmill before going home for the afternoon to take over with our kiddo. The run was fine, as treadmills go. There was no one else in the gym at work, so I got to pick what I wanted to watch, and that helped the run go a little faster. Pacing was fine, since it was on the treadmill.
I really liked my tempo run. The high school track that I like to use for "speed" (using that word very loosely) workouts is a mile an a half from our house if you enter on one side, a little over a mile if you enter on the other. So I ran at warm up-ish pace for a mile, then sped up to tempo for the half mile that it took to get to the track, ran eight laps around the track, then exited on the shorter "route home" side, and ran a half mile at tempo before slowing to cool down-ish pace for the last half mile. It was a good route, and I didn't mind the eight laps around the track. Those laps actually went even faster because right after I got there, a guy that was wearing the same running gear that
@MoanasPapa sometimes wears came on to the track. I spent a solid half mile watching him and trying to figure out if it was him and, if so, how he got there just a couple of minutes after I did, given that he was in bed when I left. Did he drive? Blow his WU pace? Why didn't he tell me he was doing an AM run? I finally passed the guy, and it definitely wasn't
@MoanasPapa. But, hooray for a nice diversion. Pacing for the tempo was good, a few seconds too fast. Pacing for WU/CD was definitely off.
I ended up skipping my Friday run. I debated hard, but I wasn't feeling 100% and thought I had a cold. My mental calculus was that I could get my run in and have my body divert resources to recovering from the run, or I could skip the run and let my body focus on kicking the cold. It was the second run I've completely skipped this training cycle.
I was kind of dreading my Saturday run because my previous long run (the 7-miler that was accidentally 7.5 miles) was so awful. But I had heard somewhere that if you can run 8, you can run a half. I have no idea if that's true, but this run was one I'd kind of been looking at as a true test for weeks now. We decided to drive up to the trail that our half is going to be on. We had hoped to do a point-to-point, but we didn't have the extra time (family in town and coming to visit that afternoon) to deal with the logistics, so we did an out-and-back. I decided that I wanted to start with the hard part, so we looked at the elevation chart and decided to start at what will be the finish line, run up the trail for 4 miles, then turn and run back down. Much of the half will be downhill, so I thought we could at least simulate some extra fatigue by starting with an uphill(ish) segment.
We had a major storm Friday in to Saturday, so some of the trail was flooded, and there were some trees down. It ended up being a great run, and I was glad to have the extra time with
@MoanasPapa, who worked really hard to keep me distracted through his very entertaining chatter. I feel better having seen part of the course, and our last two long runs will be on the middle third and top third so that we can see the full trail. We were also supposed to practice our nutrition strategy on this run. I had previously decided that Nuun is not for me. So we tried honey stinger waffles (verdict: delicious, but kind of hard to manage while on the move) and GU (verdict: salted watermelon is a little too salty, but in another flavor, I think it has promise). Anyways, I felt MUCH more confident after this run than I did after my seven-miler.
I'm now officially on the last page of my three-page training plan (thanks again,
@DopeyBadger!)!