Brookings Half Training Week 8

Week of April 10-16
Monday Planned: Recovery 5 miles
Monday Actual: Rest. I skipped my run because I thought I was going to meet with a family about re-homing a pug. No pug, no run. Grrr.

Tuesday Planned: Lactate Threshold 9 miles with 38 at LT
Tuesday Actual: Originally I had thought I would be done with POWER mid-March, so I had some tougher workouts planned for Tuesday mornings. Once they offered POWER for another session, I was all in. But clearly cannot do 9 miles with 4ish at LT after a POWER session. I had planned to do my 5 mile recovery run, but I was exhausted and actually fell back asleep after my shower, before work. Ooops.

Wednesday Planned: General Aerobic + Speed 4 Miles 8x100 m strides
Wednesday Actual: 4 miles with Toni. I apparently neglected to notice the strides we were supposed to do as well. Ooops. Then yoga. Some lovely stretchy yin yoga.

Thursday Planned: Endurance 10 Miles
Thursday Actual: 10 endurance miles. It was so beautiful out. What a perfect day for a double digit run.

Friday Planned: Recovery 4 miles
Friday Actual: 4 Recovery miles with Jordanne for the coffee run. This means I woke up in the 4s just to drink some coffee with friends before work. It was so hot, humid and muggy that I had to take a lot of walk breaks to keep my heart rate nice and low. After ten miles was a breeze, this was quite humbling.

Saturday Planned: Long Run Progression 13 miles, increase pace last 3 miles at LT
Saturday Actual: Yoga. A few weeks ago, I learned I can't run further than 4-6 miles before I teach yoga, because I'm such a creaky, tight muscled mess that I'm afraid I'm going to hurt myself. So I couldn't do my long run before I taught yoga. And then after there were thunderstorms and VERY warm temps on the forecast. I meant to do 4-5 miles just to make up some of my miles for the week, but Saturday got away from me.

Sunday Planned: Rest.
Sunday Actual: I had a terrible night of sleep, not going to bed until maybe 3:30am and tossing and turning until 8am when I finally got up. By the time I got up there wasn't enough time to run before Easter. I had thought I could go after, but I got stuck watching Kyle finish rigging a boat, which took 2.5 hours. aka the exact amount of time it would've taken me to do a 13.1 mile training run. Grrrr.

Total Mileage Planned: 45 miles
Total Mileage Actual:  18 miles. womp.

Week 9 and 10 of Spring Training

I spent way more time foam rolling my legs than I did actually doing this recovery run. Grrr. I have some monster crunchies in my IT band near my knee, and up by my hip flexor. Grrrr.

My tweaked my knee at work early in the week and ended up taking the rest of the week off from running. Not exactly ideal a few weeks out from race day, but showing up to the starting line broken isn't ideal either. Luckily the weather was ATROCIOUS so I didn't feel like I was missing out on much. I probably could've run on Sunday but I decided to be careful and give it another day.

Of course on Monday one of Kyle's friends was in town unexpectedly so we went out for dinner with him and friends, so I was in no condition to run afterwards. 

Wednesday morning I hit the treadmill before work since I didn't have to go in until noon. I had the beginnings of a cold and it was hotter than the dickens in the gym, so I had a tough time keeping my HR down in the general aerobic range. The run was a bit slower than I was expecting, but it still flew by. My knee started to twinge a little the last half mile, but otherwise it was a great run.

Wednesday night I started to feel TERRIBLE and when I woke up Thursday I could barely breathe and my sinuses felt like they were going to explode. I decided to shuffle my remaining workouts for the week to take a rest day. 

offending sinus

For Sunday's long run, I had some very serious math story problem variables to figure out at way too early in the morning. First I had to consult my garmin maps for previous long runs, as ever since I've moved (almost two years ago) I still sometimes get my mile markers confused with my old ones, as they're only 1.2 miles apart. This is normally nbd when I'm running alone, but when you're planning to meet up with someone, it can be really bad. Like the time I told Jenn I would meet her in 11 minutes at my one mile marker, only to realize when I was already on the run that I was actually meeting her at 2.2 miles and she was going to freeze to death waiting for me. :(

Then, after determining our meetups, we had to figure at what time each of us would have to leave our places at our respective running paces to meet up at the pre-existing meet up place. My brain hurt as I hadn't consumed any coffee lately, but I figured it out, nonetheless.

I took off in shorts in hopes that my legs could lose some of their transparency. Seriously. No filter can make these legs more pleasant to look at. Sorry. But shorts! I heart shorts. I should've just wore a t-shirt but I wore a long sleeved shirt and had the sleeves pushed up the whole time.

The first two miles was spent trying to get the phlegm in my throat to either come up or down. I felt like I was choking. Gross, sorry. My heart rate was high from the get go, and I think it was because my breathing was all off since I was breathing primarily out of my mouth.

I met up with Jenn at 4.7 miles, and was elated to have some company. We were both so excited to run in the warm weather that we didn't stop to think about how the bike trails would be with all of the snow and now it's all melting. It was such a sloppy mess of flooding/ice/snow. But still it was a run that wasn't in the freezing cold.

I started to feel pretty wiped out around mile 7. Not a good outlook for a 14 mile run, huh? Jenn took off for home around mile 8 so I still had six miles to slog through on my own. In to a 20mph wind. Meh. If I hadn't lost steam before, I certainly did then. Around mile 12, I was ready to call someone to come get me I was so cashed. My heart rate was crazy high (where it normally is during intervals!) yet I was only managing an 11:30 pace. Ugh. Struggle city, population: Jerbear. I ended up taking walk breaks the last two miles just to get my heart rate to come down.

Both of my knees are sore from all the change in running terrain, and my whole body--joints and muscles are incredibly sore. I seriously feel worse than I normally do after a 20 miler. I clearly should've taken another rest day or dropped down the mileage to 10-12. 

So this wasn't exactly the confidence boosting final long-long run leading up to the half in NYC but I'm still awarding myself extra credit points for completion. Woof.

Week 7 of Spring Training

Week 7 started off with a bang. I hit the treadmill to do a HR test (more on that later) and was on a monster running high from there. I spent all day Wednesday looking forward to my run. And then I got home, got on the foam roller before my run and realized I should take a rest day. I had a super ouchy spot up high near my hip flexor and one down low by my knee. Running when these spots are tight, for me, almost ensures an injury.

I didn't end up running again until Sunday. Uff. I could've run on Saturday but I had a serious case of the lazies and madsies at the weather. It was supposed to be high 30s and then magically that changed to 30 and 30-40 mph winds.  Eew.

Sunday I hit the treadmill for an easy 3 mile shakeout run.

Monday I was one of the lucky ducks to have the day off from work, so I gave the sun a chance to do its thing and melt the new snow and ice that was dumped on us last night, and then headed out for a long run in the early afternoon. I had planned for 13-14, but after seeing how messy the bike trail was, and how slowly I was running to compensate for the poor conditions, I told myself I'd be happy with 12.

Once I got about 4 miles from home, the conditions on the trail got better, so I decided to keep running, dreading when I'd have to turn around. I decided a half marathon would be a great way to spend the day. I hit my turn around point and for the first time in the history of my running career, the wind that was at my back for the first half HAD ACTUALLY DIED DOWN for the second half. Usually it doubles while I'm running with it at my back. Also a couple of the super slick and icy spots had melted so that was nice too. I ran out of water with 4 miles to go, drank some snow, but was still super thirsty when I finished up. I need a new Nathan's quickdraw because my straw got super moldy and nasty, blech. I only have my tiny little 12 oz. handheld for the moment. That's not going to cut it in a month or two when it's actually hot out.

22.1 miles for the week (Tuesday-Monday). Who else is ready for spring??