I so wanted the headline to say Nailed It. In fact, after the first 4 days of the week that title was looking pretty good.
The week started with such promise, almost nailed a super challenging tempo, I was hitting the miles, making healthy eating choices, etc, etc. Then my good friend migraine came to visit. He was very uninvited and stayed way too long.
Due to some other plans after work during the week, I had to shuffle some things around in the training plan.
Plan vs Actual
Monday- 1 mile up/down, 5 mile tempo/ Nailed It! Maybe I was super nervous about this run. I am still not a fan of tempos. Blame it on Hanson’s or maybe I just got too comfortable being a Slacker all these years. I almost bailed but then I told myself to get over it and just run. Oh holy head wind. There were points in this run that I was being pushed backwards. I actually like headwinds but this was ridiculous. 2 of my 5 miles were on pace, 1 was damn close and 2 were 30 seconds slower. So, not exactly what I was supposed to do but it made me feel good about it.
Tuesday- 1.5 miles/ 1.56 miles + yoga Oh, yeah I was feeing yesterday’s miles. I kept things super slow and easy. Then I did a yoga video when I was home.
Wednesday- 1.5 miles/ 1.6 miles The schedule flip put 2 easy days back to back but I think I needed. My legs were still feeling the speed workout. That said this was a peppy 1.6 miles.
Thursday- 2 miles up/down, 4x 800 at 5K pace/ Nailed it! Well, almost Another run I wasn’t exactly feeling. However I just went out and ran. I took the wrong freeway onramp so I ended up doing these repeats in home town on the streets. 3 of my repeats were on pace and was 1 was a minute slower. Oops. The slower one was the second one and at that moment I didn’t think I was going to finish the workout. But I did.
Friday- 1.5 miles/ Nothing This day was crazy at work and I felt the beginnings of headache move in around 4 and grow worse over the last few hours. I decided to skip the run hoping rest would make it go away.
Saturday- 8 miles/ Migraine The migraine was in full force when my alarm went off, I went back to bed. I made it out for a few errands but wound up taking a seriously long nap.
Sunday- Rest/ Migraine Funny how a migraine doesn’t feel very restful.
13.4 miles for the week. Not even close to what was planned.
Or does it? I was looking forward to putting my money where my mouth is as it were and hitting the marks during week 1 of training. Or at least trying to. I knew the miles were going to be hard and I knew I had a busy week but I was looking forward to the challenge.
Monday- 3.1 miles Baby tempo! You can read all about that enlightening run here. I’m still debating where to run my tempo miles. I’ll figure something out.
Tuesday- Planned rest day My legs were a little tight after the attempt at speed the previous day. I wore compression socks under my slacks most of the day and made sure to foam roll.
And here’s when things went south-
Wednesday- Intervals– rest I woke up with a headache and stomach pain. I held fast that I was going to run after work. Except that I didn’t make it through the day at work. It got to the point that I couldn’t even stand up straight my stomach hurt so bad. Joy.
Thursday/ Friday- Rest What I didn’t mention was that starting Tuesday night I woke up every night sweating ridiculously. TMI? Sorry. Maybe I was fighting something? My brother had been sick, my boss missed a day being sick. Whatever it was, my migraine wouldn’t quit and I felt weird. I also had a doctor’s appointment where he ordered a series of fun tests. Yay.
Saturday- Planned rest. We were going out of town for my grandmother’s memorial. I knew I wasn’t running that day. It was a sad, nostalgic, interesting morning and a long day.
Sunday- 8 miles. I didn’t want to run. I still wasn’t feeling great but I also wondered how much of that was real and how much was just lingering inertia of the week. I slept in in the morning and headed out a little before 3. Yes, I was running during the Super Bowl. 😛 I was bartering with myself in miles 1 and 2, the week was already a wash so I could call it at 4 right? I even slowed down in mile 3 which has a downhill and is usually a little faster. Grrr. But I kept running and something changed around mile 3.5. I just kept going, mile 4, across the bridge- where I pulled a sub 10 mile. This is only interesting because I average around 11:30ish until I hit the bridge and bring the pace down over the next .3 mile. I swear I wasn’t sprinting. Mile 5- still going and feeling pretty good. Mile 6 and I ran an entire hill that I have never run all of before. I celebrated on IG and my mother laughed at me. Ok, so the hill less than 1/2 mile and only gained 92 feet but let me have my tiny victory!!! Onto mile 7 and mile 8 and I still felt good! Woo hoo!! I have no idea what happened but I’ll take it!
11.1 miles for the week. 1 half completed workout, 1 fully completed workout. 1 missed run and 2 missed cross trainings. I’m still on the long run high though so yay! But I am thankful that this is a longer training plan now. If it was the standard 12 weeks, I may be a little nervous but the longer plan is keeping me a little calmer. It may be a false sense of security but only time will tell.
And the marathon training keeps rolling. I am already tired. Or still tired from an emotional April. Who knows anymore. My focus this week was to up my running from 4 days to 5. My big goal for May is to consistently run 5 days a week. My training plan actually calls for 6 days of running but one of the first changes I made was dropping Friday’s run. If I handle May well, I may consider adding in Friday miles but I am not going to worry about that now.
Monday- 4 easy miles. After an unplanned Sunday rest day, I was really hoping that these “easy” miles would feel easy. Yeah, not so much. My legs felt tired. Part of it may be mental- I was a die-hard believer in never running on Mondays. It’s only been a month-ish since I started running on Monday’s and I think I still mentally rebel sometimes. #rebelwithoutaclue Post-run, things snowballed quickly and the next 6sih hours were spent waiting in the ER.
Tuesday- 6.98 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 8 x 600’s, 1 mile c/d. Dude. This was the first time using the workout feature on my Garmin; it worked pretty well. With Monday night being so long and not getting to bed until 2 something, I told myself 2 things going into this run. 1-walk the recoveries and 2- listen to your body. I knew I was overly tired and under fueled. I didn’t want to just bail on the workout though. I decided to try the warm up and 2 600’s with recoveries and see how I felt. If I needed to drop the intervals and do easy miles, I would. I was hoping that making the recoveries a walk would be enough to get me through it. My plan calls for 600m repeats to be done between 3:26-3:35 but never having done 600m before, I had no idea what to expect. I just tried to run by feel and be consistent. The drawback to the workout feature is that it showed my current pace, I’d knew what overall time I had to hit but had never translated that to pace. Oops. Actual repeat times– 3:17, 3:22, 3:15, 3:23, 3:20, 3:19,3:16, 3:21. Holy crap, I did it!! I felt pretty good when I was done but was tired so I skipped my last recovery and went straight to the cool down. I might not have done that had I realized the watch would just stop at 6.98 miles!!!! Grrr.
Wednesday- Rest day Pizza day- nuff said. 😜
Thursday- 7.25 miles- 1.25 mile w/u, 5 tempo miles, 1 mile c/d. Oof, that was rough. Nothing about this run ever felt good. I ran this tempo on the streets and I looked forward to every stop light. Built in breaks without having to feel guilty? Hell yeah! Outside of those, I never walked or took a break, so that is huge in itself. I was glad to hit the cool down portion and even happier when that was done. I was so happy for cool down that it was almost faster than the tempo miles. Oops. A run-in with an off leash dog turned it into a walk and lowered the pace, which was probably better anyways. 😒 Tempo goal- 10:18. Tempo miles- 10:03, 9:58, 10:04, 10:10, 10:07. Pace wise, I did what I was supposed to do but it was just ugly. It was also my first run with my Fitbit and one point it said my heart rate was 182. What?! I know that most runs will feel tired but this one just had me worried for the longer tempo runs that I know are coming all too soon.
Friday- Rest day. Aww, bliss. I indulged in some very yummy tri-tip, garlic bread and garlic green beans. It was amazing.
Saturday- 8 miles Misery. I am intentionally keeping one of my weekend runs in the mid-late afternoon. I need to work on building my heat tolerance back up. I know that’s one of the things that hurt me at SLO- it was a very warm morning. Saturday was only 76 but it kicked my ass. I took more than a few walk breaks, a couple of stops and ran out of water. Well hell, that’s not a good sign. We’re not too far from constant triple digits here! Oh well, I got in some hills. To add to the pain, I realized that my training plan only called for 6 miles. 😓😂
Failed cool pic attempt but my Benjamin Button-ish made me laugh Sunday- 10 miles I got up early in an effort to beat the very high heat of 81. Yes, that was sarcasm. 😏 This was rough, my pace was all over the place. Some 10’s, some 11’s and some 12 minute miles. It was warmer than I would have liked but like I said I have to get used to it. I had more water than the day before but I dropped my bottle around mile 4 and broke the lid. Seriously?? I had enough left to get me through the run but I had to carry the bottle in a certain way so I didn’t spill the rest. I also knew that week’s mileage was catching up with me so I was fine with going slower. When all was said and done, I was still closer to long run place than I thought I would be.
Weekly miles- 36.2 miles
It was a long, hard week but I completed every workout I set out to do. I felt like throwing a little party when I finished my long run. This was my highest mileage week ever– hell yeah! Right now I feel ok, but I know I need to keep on foam rolling and stretching. Moving on to this week, my mileage stays relatively the same but my intervals shift to 6x 800’s. Yikes!! I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday that could mess with my easy run though. I thought about moving it to the morning but if I am still struggling with 8 AM runs, 4 AM is not going to happen. 😜 I really don’t want to miss my run so we will see. I know consistency is going to be key to getting through this training cycle. And a good dose of good luck.
I feel like there is something else I wanted to share but I can’t remember what it was. Oops!
How was your weekend?
Do you run a last recovery or go straight to cool down?
This was the kind of week that ran over me with a truck, backed up for more, then sped off into the night. Workout wise, the week actually started off pretty good, it was work life that was kicking me around. The I got sick and spent a lot of time sleeping. How come that is never as exciting as it sounds?
Monday- 4.3 miles
I was debating where to run when traffic made the choice for me. A fire started on the Cuesta grade Sunday and by Monday it had grown exponentially. It was heavily stressed that people find alternate routes home which sent them my way. I couldn’t even get on to the off ramp to change highways so I just took the back roads home. This was repeated for most of the week.
I was feeling nostalgic apparently and headed to my former work location and ran from there. Which is really just my home route backwards but it feels different for some reason. 😀 My calves were super tight for the first few miles of the run. I ended up stopping every so often to try and stretch them out. I hit a hill at the halfway point and alternated walking forwards and backwards up it. I wonder what the home owners thought when they looked out the window. 😋 Things finally felt like they popped into place a mile later. By then I was almost done. Soreness aside, my splits were good for an easy run and I felt good after the run too.
Tuesday- Rest
I didn’t get home until 8ish. I looked at the bike but nah.
Wednesday- 6 miles -intervals
I haven’t done speed work in a few weeks and I was feeling nervous. Since I couldn’t get to the lake path due to traffic, I headed to the gym. I figured the treadmill would help me maintain pace better anyways. Turns out I haven’t been to the gym in 182 days. 😁!!!!! They have a new system that tells you things like that now. Ouch.
The plan called for a warm up followed by 10 min @ HMP, 1 min recovery x3 then cool down. I knew I didn’t have that in me so I went back to a speed workout I skipped 2 weeks ago. Similar except only 8 min HMP x3. But yeah, that’s not what happened. What I did pull off was 6 min @ 9:13 pace, 2 min recovery x4 with warm up and cool down. Time wise, I hit the 24 minutes but my pace should have been 9:08. Still for my first attempt in 2+ weeks, I am calling it a win. It was also my longest run in my Pure Flow’s so far. Other than the general first mile achiness, they felt great. I always feel like it takes longer for me to find my stride on a treadmill. Anyone else have that issue?
Thursday- 7 miles stationary bike
I was feeling pretty good after Wednesday’s speed work but planned for a rest day. I was hoping I could maybe get my long run in on Friday so I wanted to stay off my feet. I started off the day feeling pretty good but things went south early in the morning. I started to feel light headed and nauseous and just exhausted. It only got worse as the day went on. I was supposed to attend a business mixer but just wasn’t feeling up to mingling. I was hoping I could sweat it out on the bike. I also figured if it made me worse, it was easy to quit since I owned the bike. 😃 I didn’t feel worse so that’s a plus right?
Friday- Rest
Or not. I still felt crappy on Friday. A coworker was feeling poorly too so we thought we were fighting a bug of some sort. I was drinking Airborne and Vitamin C but no luck. I didn’t even make it through the day at work. It takes a lot for me to leave but I just couldn’t do it. I went home and crashed, taking a 4 hour nap. Is it still a nap if it’s dark when you wake up?
Some nurse- asleep on the jobSaturday- Rest
I had some errands to do in SLO and those hurt. I was so tired and just beat. Running was not happening. The furniture did finally get rearranged. Now, there should be no way I can run into the bike in the dark. I’m sure I’ll find a way though. 😃
Sunday- 5.5 miles Stationary bike
Grrr. I had a company picnic for most of the day so I needed to run in the morning. Yeah, no. The alarm went off, I checked the temp and saw 90% humidity. My lungs were having none of that. When did I become such a baby? I headed south for the company picnic. Hours of sun and sand later, and I was again exhausted. I didn’t even do anything! Watching the executives hula hoop was amusing though. It was around 100 when I got home and there was still Sunday dinner. Plus my gym closes early on the weekend so I figured a little time on the bike was better than nothing at all.
Overall, the week started pretty good and hit some speed bumps at the end. That said, it could have been worse, I still got in 4 workouts. Much better than it would have been without the bike. It seems like lately I have only been able to accomplish a long run or a speed workout during the week. One but not both, I really need to work on that.
Paleo- B-
I actually did really well until I got sick. I admit that something I always crave when sick is french fries. It’s my comfort food, something about the grease and salt make me feel better. Burger King happened on Thursday and In N Out on Friday. I do have to say that they didn’t taste as good as I remember. But that should help fight future cravings right? I got things back under control by Sunday. Tri tip and salad at the BBQ, I passed on the bread. I also really like subbing broccoli in for pasta when Sunday dinner involves pasta. Plus it’s super easy to steam and clean up so no extra work on my mom’s part since she’s in charge of Sunday dinner. 😉
This week has more testing for my current GI issues but it doesn’t seem very invasive so I am hoping to hit all my workouts. Fingers crossed! Plus I am attending an injury prevention seminar so that should be interesting. Now if people could just stop yelling at me, that would be awesome.
How was your week?
Does your company do annual BBQ’s or parties? Year’s ago we did formal ones, I kind of miss them.
And it’s Sunday Monday. That was a fast weekend. As much as I would love another day or 4 off, I am really looking forward to this week. 2 of our 3 new hires start tomorrow today- woo hoo!!!! The week will be crazy busy but yay!
Monday-
Rest day. I thought about running. Packed my bag just in case but stuck to the plan. My food choices this past week or so have not been the best and my system has been letting me know.
Tuesday-
The plan called for speed work but half way to home town I knew I wasn’t up to it. I was so tired I decided to move my easy run to Tuesday and do the speed work when I was feeling more alert. This easy run kicked my ass. It was only in the high 80’s so I figured I would be fine plus my usual up and back has shade throughout so I though that would help. As I was heading out I saw a suspicious situation- think drug pick up like, or at least how I would guess one of those looked- so I knew I was going to take the longer way back which is a little more public. I though that extra 1/2 mile was going to kill me. I was huffing and puffing so bad I was actually worried about an asthma attack. Easy should not do that! I didn’t look at my splits until later since I was irritated. Ok, I guess it makes a little more sense now. Oops!Wednesday-
After the previous day’s accidental progression, I thought about skipping the speed work. The plan called for a 15 minute warm up then 4 x 2:00 @ HMP with 1:00 recovery in between then cool down. That didn’t sound too bad so I figured I would try one and go from there. Since I have such trouble doing math while running, I decided that my goal half marathon pace will be 9:00. It will give me a tiny cushion to hopefully break 2 hours and the splits will be a little easier to remember while running. 🙂
I’m not the only one who sees the bad math in this right?
I did my warm up and then changed my watch to current pace so I could pace the intervals. They felt harder than I would have liked but doable so I kept going. My watch flashed low battery as I was finishing the 3rd interval so I stopped to save what data I had before continuing on. I finished my last interval and then did the cool down. I checked my splits as I was stretching and noticed that my intervals were all pretty consistent… and that either I wasn’t using the current pace feature or it was really wrong. I can only dream that my half marathon pace will be 8:30 one day. What the heck?
Thursday-
Planned rest. Another meeting about a race but this time other people showed up, woo hoo! And I got happy mail!!!!! Thanks Pavement Runner!
Friday-
I was off before 6 so I thought about running a few miles but I didn’t want anything to interfere with getting in a longer run on Saturday morning so I decided to stick to the plan. Instead I did all my usual Saturday errands and shopping so that there were really #noexcuses on Saturday.
Saturday-
I planned on running by 9 but slept horribly so I gave myself an extra 30 minutes. I was out the door a little after 9:30 in an effort to avoid the heat. It wasn’t early enough. The run started in the high 70’s and ended in the high 80’s. Doing 4 hill repeats in the middle didn’t help. I won’t lie, there was way more walking than there should have been. 😦 But 8 miles and my longest run since SLO done. My #runallday shirt was so comfy to run in, a little too big but that’s my fault. 🙂 Thanks to some freaky weather we’ve been having I still ran at the hottest part of the day. The temp dropped in the afternoon and it started to rain! Really?! Miles 1-7 averaged around 11:30 and mile 8 was 9:46. Umm, ok then.
Sunday-
Thought about running but some cleaning projects ran away with the day. On the upside my car is no longer an embarrassment. 🙂 I also worked my Hogwarts swap craft and it’s not coming along like I planned.
Second week of training- complete! My mileage is finally going up- woo hoo!
What are your plans this week? One thing you’re looking forward to in July? How is it almost July?!
Ever seen something shady on a run?
Anyone else’s car look like they live in it? I think I had 6 pairs of shoes in there.
Slacker Runner 