Weekly Wrap-Up: July 11-17

It was a busy week, and that’s the main reason why I didn’t get the lost car key story posted. Next week, maybe.

Also, I sort of screwed up the dates on my training plan. It wasn’t supposed to start until next week. However, since I’m going to spend a few days in Portland in August, I’ve changed my plan so I don’t really skip a week of training, I just broke one week up into two parts (since I know I won’t be able to run 10+ miles while I’m on vacation, and even 7 miles might be pushing it). So it all works out in the end.

Weight Check: 169.3 pounds, down 1.4 from last week. Woohoo! I drank a bunch of Mountain Dew this week, which was bad, but otherwise, I generally ate relatively healthy things. All that running in the heat probably helps.

I did my weigh-in before my run this morning. Normally, unless I have to juggle my schedule due to travel (and if I’m traveling I’m probably moving my weigh-in anyway), Sunday is a rest day, which makes it a good day for a weigh-in. This week of my training plan includes a Sunday run, and I’ve got a few other weeks where I run on Sunday, but I’ll stick with a pre-run weigh-in whenever it comes up.

This Week’s Runs
Day Scheduled Total Miles
Monday Easy 6 6.01
Tuesday 3 mile warm up, 6 x 20 sec hill sprints with 1:30 recovery, 1 mile cool down 5.01
Thursday Easy 6 6.01
Saturday 12 Miles LSD 12.01
Sunday Easy 7* 5.01

Total: 34.05 miles

I’m not crazy about the table formatting, but my HTML-Fu is weak. (Or maybe it’s my CSS-Fu. Or maybe the problem is I don’t know which one is the problem.) Hey, it’s readable.

I don’t have much to say about Monday and Thursday. Hot and humid, but I got through them. Tuesday was my first workout, and it involved hill sprints. I walked at the end of the warm up to make it easier to get to the exact spot on the hill where I wanted to start, and I walked the first half of each recovery. I now think that was a little too much walking. I ended up with a slower overall pace than my Monday and Thursday runs, which doesn’t seem quite right. I’ve got more hill sprint workouts coming up, each with 1:30 recovery, and I think I’ll try for 30 seconds walking and 1 minute of jogging for those. My average pace for each of the 6 sprints: 8:04, 7:55, 7:34, 8:22, 8:12, and 7:53. I was hoping for a little faster, but when the interval is only 20 seconds, my ability (or lack thereof) to start and stop my watch at exactly the right time has an effect. Also, I added a little bit to the cool down, about .15, just so I’d end up with a nice round number of miles.

Saturday I drove up to Freedom Park. Once again, we got tons of rain Friday evening, and I couldn’t run under 3rd Street without scuba gear. I got around it. It was still hot and humid, although not the worst I’ve seen, and I took it easy, stopped for water as often as I could, and rallied at the end. My fastest mile was Mile 12, so there’s that.

At the start of this week, I wasn’t sure about 7 miles on Sunday, which is why I listed it with an asterisk. It would have put my mileage for the week at around 36, which is a pretty big jump from the previous week’s 29.35. Also, the last time I ran over 30 miles in a week, it was February. I also noticed that I had runs scheduled for Monday and Tuesday next week, so I decided to cut my Sunday run back to 5 miles. Considering I ran 12 miles the day before, it went OK.

Next Week:
Monday: Easy 7
Tuesday: 2 mile warmup, 5×4:00 at Threshold Pace with 1:00 recovery, 2 mile cool down
Thursday: Easy 6
Saturday: 13 miles LSD
Sunday: Easy 7

For my training, Threshold Pace is supposed to be my half marathon pace. I’m going to say that my current half marathon pace is 10:30/mile.