Back To It

I have to share an awesome email I got from my manager post-marathon.  Or I guess just the card attached to the email.  It. Is.  Awesome.

Prior to doing the marathon, I had wanted to do a half marathon in mid-June.  I found one and created my training program to start 8 days after the marathon.  Turns out 8 days was this Monday.  On the schedule 3 x 1600 @ 7:28-7:45 pace.  What the hell was I thinking putting my most loathed workout right off the bat??  Silly Jerbear.

The crazy thing was, I was actually excited about doing the mile repeats because I was so stinkin' sick of not running.  Since it's currently late July- August weather outside (90+ degrees +100% humidity+ 40 mph winds = wtf???) I headed immediately to the gym.  Hey, when it's this hot, you get your warm up and sweat-on during the drive too the gym.  Who needs a warm up?  Seriously...yuck.

I got to the gym and got going on my mile warm up.  Body assessment:  knees are a bit tight but feel good otherwise.  I stretched after the first mile and then got to it.  I was surprised at how great the first mile felt--7:37.  I was not surprised about the copious amounts of sweat pouring off of me.  I chose to walk the first .1 of my recovery 1/2 mile and jog the last .4 of it.  As soon as I started the slow jog my IT bands were screaming at me.  I decided to give the second mile repeat a go to see if they speed would loosen them up.  Nope.  After another quarter mile I realized that doing the full mile would probably just do my harm then go, so opted to bump up the speed a smidge and end with an 800 m. instead.  I finished it in 3:46.  I did another 1/2 mile walk/jog cool down.

I did 3.5 miles in 33:09.

warm up	1 Mi	9:39	9:39	9:39
Interval	1 Mi	7:37	17:16	7:37
Recovery	0.5 Mi	6:21	23:37	12:42
Interval	0.5 Mi	3:46	27:23	7:32
Recovery	0.5 Mi	5:48	33:11	11:36

I stretch stretch stretched and then hit the stationary bike for some ridiculous gossip mag catch up and more leg loosening up.  I think I'll omit the rest of my speed work this week for some easy runs and then hit the ground running (<----yeah... I went there....) next week, since I only have 5 weeks till race day.  WHOO!!!

I do have some pain in my foot somewhat reminiscent to what I had last fall.  If I remember correctly it was a combo of playing volleyball and wearing shoes with too many miles on them.  The shoes I'm wearing are about 100 miles shy of what I usually get out of them (literally I got 430 out of my purple versions of the ones I'm currently wearing, and have 300ish on the pinks), but I bit the bullet and bought a new pair today.  There's a chance I just need a little more stability while my body is still healing, and I can still use the pink ones for some cruddy weather runs so I can still get some use out of them.

And in still more aren't you sick of hearing about my marathon news:  I found a video of me starting the race!  I was pretty excited because my parents were beyond bummed they couldn't be there, so they were able to see me run 2 seconds of my 4 hour and 12 minute race. ;)  You can see me at 1:30-1:33 running towards the middle in my pink shirt and green shorts. :D



Make sure to check out Beth at Shut Up and Run's Sweet givewaway!!