Weekly Wrap-Up: March 13-19

I did it. 2:08:01.250. (Yes, they went to 3 decimal places.) No ankle issues, or really, much of any issues. I’ll do a full report soon, but as you can imagine, I’m pretty happy.

I updated the header, but I made things difficult for myself. Apparently for some reason I decided to take the car key picture in landscape mode instead of portrait. I ended up cropping it, and it still looks weird, but it’ll do for now. I guess I’ll just have to go out and run another half marathon PR. I’ll use the original in my race report, of course. Also, farewell to the 2016 Charleston Half Marathon picture. I kind of liked the brick background as a way to break up the header picture. I tried to get a few bushes into the background of my Tobacco Road picture, and maybe it would have worked better if I had used freaking portrait mode.

I’m especially happy that things turned out so well, because it wasn’t exactly a very good week. I got a cold. It was a head cold (and really didn’t affect anything outside my nose), so it didn’t directly affect my running. It caused me to lose some sleep, and at times it started to mess with my mind. (Tuesday was really bad.) But in the end, I was able to get through Tobacco Road.

I officially signed up for the Teal Diva 5K. I pretty much knew I’d be running it again, more for the cause than the race itself, and I actually registered this past week. I did notice that they tweaked the course a little. I measured the change using Map My Run, and it showed 0.25 miles of extra mileage. If that’s true, then that would put it right around 3.1 miles, and that makes me feel better. I want to run a 5K, not a 2.85 mile race.

Weight Check: I did my official weigh-in on Saturday morning before I left town for the race. And it was 162.6, down exactly 2 pounds from last week. So one of the side effects of my cold was that I completely lost my appetite. I can’t say that I recommend this diet, but it sort of worked for me. However, having a cold and trying to sleep when it’s difficult to breathe isn’t good, and it left me pretty tired, so I countered that with a lot of Mountain Dew, but apparently not enough to gain weight.

Total: 30.14 miles

I tapered, and I’d have to say, based on my race results, it worked.

I decided to make Monday a tempo run, since I’d still have plenty of time to recover from it. I ended up doing it outside, my first outdoor workout run since early January. I managed to get a reverse split. My legs didn’t feel great, but they were good enough, I guess.

Tuesday was cold and, after about the first mile, rainy. The day after my tempo run, I was not surprised at all that my legs felt kind of tired. I survived.

Wednesday I went back to the treadmill, but this time at a slower pace and a shorter distance because of my taper. I ran 10:43/mile for 1st 3 miles, then sped up on the last mile, ending at 9:50/mile. The slower pace is even more mentally excruciating. My legs felt OK, though.

Friday was St. Patrick’s Day. As someone who’s Irish every day of the year, I felt like I needed to wear green for my run. Unfortunately, it was 26(!) degrees outside, and the only green running shirt I’ve got has short sleeves. So I took a long sleeved non-green shirt as a base, then wore the green short sleeved shirt over it. Problem solved. Never mind that I was just running though my neighborhood.

I have no idea how my legs felt. They were numb. I ran pretty well, but that may have been just to get out of the cold.

Sunday was great. More to come.

This week, I’ll get back into it. I’d like to get out to some of the brewery runs now that it’s light outside in the evenings, but this week I need to try to get back to my regular schedule, and evening runs won’t help. Sunday long runs don’t work well with my ideal schedule. But hey, after the race I ran, a little scheduling inconvenience is totally worth it.

My race report will have to wait a week, because I have something else planned.