Week 8 with the Coach

Another training week in the bag. The week started off promising, fizzled in the middle, but ended with a nice comfortable long run.

I felt tons better Sunday than I have been feeling, I think the combination of starting a bit slower and pigging out Saturday made the difference. Going to be better about making sure I eat enough on the weekends to sustain my long run efforts.

Saturday and Sunday I also added in an ab workout, I am going to start doing abs and push ups everyday to work on my core strength, and thighs, hips every other day to prevent any itb issues etc. Really going to try hard to pay attention to my posture all day long, this will take time undoing 27 years of slacking on my posture!

57.75 for the week

Monday- Rest
Tuesday- 7.3ish miles on the track
Wednesday- 9 miles 8:20 pace
Thursday- 12.2ish @ 7:55 pace
Friday-6 easy ~8:30 pace plus 4*100 strides/100 recovery
Saturday- ~7.6 including warm up and cool down and Aurora Fun Run 5k
Sunday- 15 at 7:59 pace

Tuesday Track Workout:

As usual 1 mile warm up and 4*100 strides then we did 3 sets of 800, 2 minutes rest, 600, 3 minutes rests followed by one last 800 to get in 5000 total. With the extra long rest the goals were to hit 3:00 on the first 800 with the 600 at same pace and the last 800 was to be 2:50 or better (getting slightly faster each set up to that)

The first two sets actually felt good, but the last set and final 800 were work. Felt good to hit the times coach wanted though.

800 (rest) 2:59.92 (1:59.76)
600 (rest) 2:15.13 (3:01.37)
800 (rest) 2:54.37 (1:59.37)
600 (rest) 2:09.53 (2:59.23)
800 (rest) 2:52.04 (2:02.13)
600 (rest) 2:07.84 (3:12.75)
800 2:49.95

Thursday Medium Long Run-
I was just not in the mood for a solo 12 miler Thursday. It was storming like crazy in the morning so I held off to do the run after work. With no Garmin and more storms threatening I decided to just do the run on the treadmill. That lasted all of 4 miles before I was ready to crawl out of my skin so I headed outside to get in the rest and promptly got drenched in a quick 5 minute downpour. Ran to the track to get the rest of the miles in which was good for practicing pace, but not mentally stimulating at all. At least I got it done!

Rewarded myself with a Hoegarden and ice cream at dinner.

Saturday Aurora Fun Run 5K-

Well you can't have a PR race everyday and Saturday just wasn't my day. I try to look at bad races and use them as lessons learned so that I don't repeat the same mistakes in the future.

I didn't eat very well Friday and I really didn't spend any time mentally planning for the race, I was basically winging it, and that is evident by the result. Felt sluggish on the warm up and my strides but was still shocked to hear 6:10ish for the first mile after a hard effort. Mentally just shut down after this, no drive to catch anyone and no drive to up my pace or effort, my form was suffering, my legs felt toasted on the inclines and I just didn't have that extra race day gear to tap into. Definitely left something on the course, and next time I will be driven to work harder. 19:46, 6th female, 1st in age group. 5ks are tough on a good day, and Saturday just wasn't a good day for me. Oh well, it's over and I had a great time the rest of the day partying with friends and relaxing.

I do need to work on my posture and form though. I have got to stop slouching and swinging my arms all over the place, this is more pronounced when tired which was the case Saturday. If you see me slouching get on my case!!!

Also I don't think the warm up worked for me Saturday. I need more than 2 easy miles and 4 strides. Next time 30 minutes easy and perhaps a mile of that closer to marathon pace before the strides.

Sunday Long Run-

Took it out easy and just enjoyed the run, it was great weather (although still humid as evidenced by my entire shirt being soaked) and I had fun running with BB, S, and new gal R. I was definitely feeling the buns and thighs workout at the top of Hawthorne Hill but was still feeling perky when I finished out the run in just under 8 minute pace. Much better than the last few weeks!