Well, I had to juggle my schedule a little bit because I screwed up, but I ended up with a pretty good week, running-wise.
Weight Check: 170.4 pounds, up 0.2 from my last weigh-in two weeks ago. I will gladly take that, considering how the first week went. I suppose I did a little bit better this past week.
| Day | Scheduled | Total Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday | 4 miles easy plus Strides | 4.01 |
| Wednesday | 4 miles easy plus Strides | 4.72 |
| Friday | Fartlek: 15 minute warm-up 10×1 minute hard with 1 minute easy in between, 10 minutes easy cool down (or until 4 miles) | 4.01 |
| Saturday | 7 miles easy | 7.01 |
Total: 19.75 miles
So, I was supposed to do the 4 miles easy plus Strides on Monday. Originally, I had planned to stay over at my parents’ house Sunday night so I didn’t have to drive home Easter night. What happened after I posted last week is that we ended up taking a trip to my sister’s house in Raleigh. I was going to stop by my parents’ house on my way back, so I just grabbed one bag to bring with me with clothes for Monday, including my running clothes. The problem is, I somehow forgot to throw my running shorts in the bag. D’oh! I realized this Monday morning, and decided I’d just push my run back to Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, I was a little pressed for time, because I forgot that I’d need to drop my car off for an oil change before work. So I decided to skip the strides, and I also kind of skipped my usual warm-up. I didn’t think anything about it at the time.
The weather was pretty nice, 52 and partly cloudy. My legs actually felt better as I went along, and initially I thought maybe it was a little bit of rust due to two days without running. I tried not to push too hard, with another run coming on Wednesday, but I did manage to speed up a little on the last mile. When I mentioned to my coach that my legs didn’t feel great, and she wondered whether I needed to change my warm-up.
Busted. I fessed up, told her that I skipped my actual warm-up, and that I probably just needed to be consistent with actually doing the regular warm-up. She was cool about it, so it’s OK, but I made absolutely sure I did the warm-up before every run for the rest of the week.
Wednesday was the day when I finally did strides for the first time. They originally showed up in my schedule on March 21, but that was the day it was 39 and misting and I couldn’t even make it to 4 miles, let alone add strides at the end. Then they were on the schedule for the week of March 26, but that’s when I was out of town for my uncle’s funeral, and I ended up just doing some treadmill runs instead. Then they were on the schedule for Monday, but I forgot my shorts, and Tuesday, but I didn’t have time for them. Finally, after 3 weeks, I did strides.
I’ve seen several different ways of doing strides, but what my coach prescribes is to run for about 30 seconds, accelerating to a fast pace, holding it for about 10 seconds, then gradually decelerating, and taking a short break in between.
The weather was tough, 66, overcast, and humid. Welcome to June. My legs felt like they weren’t quite 100%, but they were still OK. I did a full warm-up before this run.
After 4 easy miles, I finished with six 30 second strides with 60 seconds in between. I jogged for the full 60 seconds after the first stride, then went with about 30 seconds of walking/30 seconds of jogging after that. I think it went fairly well for my first time doing strides, and I did finish with my fastest stride at the end.
For Friday, I ended up doing a Fartlek workout that was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but my coach revised my schedule after my screw-up on Monday. The weather was much cooler, 43 degrees, but not too bad. My legs felt fine. I had a little trouble finding my fast and my easy paces at first (Lap 5 was supposed to be “fast” and Lap 6 was supposed to be “easy,” but I averaged 10:23/mile, then 10:20/mile, oops), but after that my pacing got better, then I really pushed it on the last interval, getting down to 7:47(!)/mile. I did start the cool down with a short walk break, but after that, I tried to keep a steady, easy pace. Once I found the right paces, I managed to keep all but one of my fast intervals under 10:00/mile, so I’m happy about that.
Saturday was interesting. I was on call for work, and it was raining. It wasn’t too bad, though, the rain was mostly light, there was no wind, and it was 56 degrees. Not ideal, but it could have been much worse.
My legs felt OK, even after Friday’s workout. I made it the full 7 miles, and didn’t get paged for work during my run. I was probably a little faster than I should have been on mile 2 (and maybe mile 4) but otherwise I kept a fairly steady pace until I pushed it a little bit near the end.
It was my longest run since my half marathon on December 9, so there’s that.
This week, I guess it’s almost back to normal. Maybe I’ll even get a monthly wrap-up done, but don’t hold your breath.