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!!
