This will be short and sweet because I only ran three times last week! Unfortunately, I'll be marking my spreadsheet with red blocks because I failed on two of my runs, one of which I didn't even bother doing.
Monday -
6 miles at 9:20 pace. I remember this being a little stiff. It wasn't horrible by any means, but I was very glad when I finished.
Wednesday -
4.44 miles at 9:07. This was going to be my first tempo run since the 10k, but unfortunately it didn't go as planned. The goal was to slow my pace to 8:00-10 and add an extra mile. All I could manage to hit was 8:20, and it felt disgusting. I knew I wasn't going to be able to keep it up, so I decided to slow down to my slow pace and jog the remaining miles. Only, I wasn't even able to do that. I walked 1.5 miles home. The shame.
Thursday -
I usually run on Thursday. After feeling so disgusting after yesterday, I didn't bother trying. Instead, I cycled 15 miles and found out that my favorite running route was open again. There was construction on a hill that closed the road down for a while last year and I never checked back to see if it was open. I don't drive that way so I didn't notice the "closed to through traffic" sign had been removed. Little things.
Saturday -
10 miles at 8:41 pace. I was expecting to fail, and I sort of did. Don't you like it when things work out like you planned? I ran along the previously closed route, which included more hills than I usually run. I also overdressed, felt thirsty, and was dealing with my sucky foot. The foot didn't bother me in that my stride changed, but it felt bad. (It felt like a dull, numb ache for the rest of the day.) So, I didn't run a proper progression run because I couldn't hold on to race pace. That discouraged me quite a bit. After the ninth mile, I walked a little to calm myself down before running the last mile.
Total - 20
That was the lowest week of the training cycle. I'm tempted to just run three days per week for the rest of the cycle, but I'll be in Jersey up until Pittsburgh and don't feel comfortable cycling there. I can manage a short, three mile jog, so that will probably replace my six/seven mile recovery run.
Ugh. I hate running so little after I worked hard to get myself up to the mid-twenties. I know I'm only decreasing my mileage by a little bit, though I already subbed my 12 miler for Saturday's 10 mile run because of my foot. It's not just the upcoming half that I'm worried about, it's the Sunburst half marathon that I am registered for, and the 5k a week and a half after that.
This sucks.
Tough week. This is rest, though, and rest can also make you stronger. It's not that big of a mileage dip so shrug it off! You have several weeks until these bigger races.
ReplyDeleteThink positively and everything else will come along.