This week held some emotional work stress and other schedule changes that made me change a few workouts and modify one of the runs. Overall though, I can feel myself getting stronger which I love.
Monday 50 minutes with 40 regular and last 10 progressing to 8 minute pace
I felt pretty good on the extended “warm up” portion of the run. I focused on maintaining an easy pace, not so easy for me. The progression up to pace took a little while. I got a little too fast on the downhill and had to stop near the end for a light but other than that, everything went really well on this run.
Tuesday tempo run with warm up and cool down
I felt really tired and talked myself into rearranging the week, pushing this run to Wednesday and pushing Wednesday’s strength training to Friday. I told myself that it would work much better for Ellis anyway since it would give him a few more days to recover. I don’t even know why I felt tired, not exhausted, just tired, that morning.
Wednesday tempo run with warm up and cool down
When I started this run, I knew that I would stop halfway through like I did on the first two. However, I felt better than expected during the tempo and then told myself that I would pause when the episode of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” ended which was about 16 minutes into the tempo portion, 3 minutes over the halfway point. By the time the episode ended I convinced myself that I could finish out the tempo portion, only 10 more minutes. Since I still felt good I kept going. This has to be one of the most successful tempo runs I have ever had.
Thursday 55 minutes with 20 minutes of fartleks 50 minutes regular
Several things kept us from starting this run on time. I also looked at my training plan that morning and had no idea how I was supposed to do 20 minutes worth of fartleks. That seemed like an absurdly long time for fartleks and my brain could not figure out how to get it done. By the time we were ready to start I had run out of my cushion of time and thus ended up cutting 5 minutes off the run and leaving off the fartleks.
Friday strength training
We were going to do strength training but Ellis woke up stiff, sore and slightly in pain as he still heals from his bike accident last Saturday. Since I knew I had the below workout coming up and I also knew that I had had a long week, I slept a little more instead. Hopefully we’ll be back at it with strength training next week.
Saturday 140 minutes long run with 30 minute progression segments
This was the longest, specific workout I have ever put together. I was nervous about this run, so nervous apparently that I dreamed about it the night before in the most absurd manner. Of course in the dream I was not able to complete the run. In real life though, the run turned out to be a rousing success. Due to the changing terrain, I was not able to hit the exact specified pace for each segment but I got pretty close with almost every single split. At first I found it hard to slow myself down to a 9:30 pace. I did end up looking at my Garmin a whole lot more than I usually do in practically any run. Thanks to the cloud cover, the heat did not drain my quite as much during this run but I still looked like I had jumped in a pool when I finished. That last 10 minutes of the fastest segment? Yeah, that felt like it nearly killed me but I got it done and managed to slog to back to the car for the final 20 minutes at an easy pace.
I am quite pleased with this run, pleased with the fact that I showed up, that I did not wimp out on a structured long run with specific paces. (That’s what has doomed me before.)