Half Marathon Training: Week #3

Wow. What a doozey of a week. Well, at least it started off good...

Sunday: Rest

Monday: 3.5 mi run + strength

Mother Nature, how sneaky you are. After giving us a nice layer of ice and snow over the weekend, you turn around and change your mind come Monday. I woke up to pouring rain, followed by sunny skies and pushing 50 degrees in the early afternoon. I was a bit hesitant to how the trails would be but figured I'd give them a shot anyways. Instead of being covered in what looked like a nice layer of ice, the trails were covered in inches of melting slush or simply pools of water. Yeah, not going to happen for 3 1/2 miles. I debated with myself for a while: go run the neighborhood across the street until I hit my mileage or have hubby take me to the gym later? I just couldn't pass up the incredibly warm winter weather. Although I forgot that even though the sidewalks would most likely be clear of slush, slush turns into... water. So I was definitely bobbing and weaving around a ton of puddles. Definitely by far not my fastest pace ever, but seeing as I was mostly wandering around, I'm really not surprised.

Tuesday: Yoga + 6 x 400 Intervals

After seeing what the trails looked like on Monday I knew they were still going to be a hot mess the following day. So I broke down and had Adam guest pass me into the gym so I could do my interval training on a nice, dry, non-slippery surface. Also known as the treadmill. While I kind of sort of consider hopping on a treadmill cheating (since there is no variation in the terrain and no wind resistance, things you'll never have in a race) I made sure to bring along my handy dandy heart rate monitor to make sure I was pushing myself enough. Although, when it comes to high speeds, and pushing yourself, and treadmills, one thing always looms in the back of my mind...

Yeah. I don't want to be that kid. Luckily, I felt awesome during the workout, and as expected, ran much faster than I would have outside. Usually outside I aim for 2:00 or under (giving about an 8:00 pace), and I definitely was well under that indoors: 1:55, 1:51, 1:51, 1:50, 1:48, under 1:47. And the great news is I felt like I could have done at least two more intervals. Woot!

Wednesday: 3 mile run

Well. So much for that good "I can run forever feeling". Definitely feeling the effects of the day before mixed with slippery muddy trails again. Not a horrible run, but not one of my best either. I got sidetracked with hurrying to pick something up from school right after my run, which totally killed the whole working out vibe and I ended up skipping my strength work out. Oops. Really regretting that decision, but as we all know, hindsight is 20/20.

Thursday: Indoor Soccer Game

I went to bed Wednesday night determined to get in at least a 2 mile run and my strength workout before our soccer game. I woke up Thursday morning to a ridiculously dry throat (that took forever to go away) and feeling like I had just performed a super strenuous upper body workout the day before. Needless to say, the 2 mile run was passed on, as well as the strength workout. The soccer game left me exhausted and unable to catch my breath (which isn't normal), only reaffirming my decision to back off of the workouts earlier in the day. Sometimes I need to yell at myself to quit being lazy, and sometimes I just need to listen to my body. Honestly though, it's kind of hard to tell which to do at times.

Friday: 7 mile run

After not feeling so hot the night before, I was a little nervous about moving the long run up a day. But, seeing as we were helping a friend move on Saturday, which would most likely take up a large portion of the day, it was the right thing to do. I caught up with a couple friends 2 miles into their 9 miler. Which actually worked out pretty good. We held around a 9 minute or better pace for most of the run, which I was kind of surprised I was able to keep up as long as I did seeing how I felt the day before. Then around the last 5 1/2 mile mark I could feel myself slowly losing steam. I was also starving, which didn't help matters. Despite having a blah mile between 5.5 and 6.5, I finished out the run pretty strong, which I was happy about. It may or may not have helped that it was starting to get chilly as the sun was going down and I really just wanted to be done. Eh, it happens. Hopefully I'll be feeling a little stronger next week.

Saturday: Rest Helping a friend move.

Even though this week wasn't to the level I was expecting, I still have high hopes for next week. And I need to make sure I stopping skipping my strength workouts. :)

We've opted to move the long run to Friday again as our soccer game is on Saturday rather than the normal Thursday. Trying to do sprints after a long run = fail.

We'll see how it goes... chances of this staying "as is" is pretty slim if we go by the previous few weeks.