Weekly Wrap-Up: July 23-29

I retired a pair of shoes this week and bought another pair (although that pair will have to wait until next week to get broken in).

First, my 4th pair of Brooks Adrenaline 17s.

This is after my Saturday run, which was their last run. They got me through this year’s Teal Diva 5K. And they were the shoes I wore last year in New York City. (Sigh. Not finishing that race still sucks.) Still, they were a good pair of shoes, and it wasn’t their fault that I got a stomach bug on race day.

With my reduced mileage earlier this year, it took until late July to finally buy a pair of Brooks Adrenaline 18s, which were released last year in late October.

Yeah, the 18s look very, very different. They still felt pretty comfortable when I tried them on, and that’s really all I care about. I do kind of like the new look, though.

As far as my running this week, it was hot, but I managed.

Weight Check: 164.0 pounds, down 1.6 from last week. Woohoo! I’m officially not overweight. I know that in reality it doesn’t matter that much, but it still gives me a small mental boost, and I’ll take whatever I can get. I guess I ate fairly healthy stuff this week, and I ran enough to cancel out any bad stuff.

This Week’s Runs
Day Scheduled Total Miles
Monday 6 miles easy 6.01
Tuesday 5 miles easy 5.01
Wednesday Progression Run: 4 miles easy, 2 miles comfortably hard 6.01
Friday 5 miles easy 5.01
Saturday 11 miles easy, 3 miles at moderate effort 14.01

Total: 36.05 miles

Monday was a few degrees cooler, but very humid. My legs felt a little tired, especially on the uphills, but it wasn’t too bad. I managed to increase my pace on each mile while keeping the pace easy until the end.

On Tuesday, it rained before and after my run, and it was one of those days where I wish it had rained during my run. My legs felt a little tired on the uphills, but otherwise they seemed OK. I started pretty slow, but managed to speed up (Mile 3 was 1 second slower than mile 2, so it wasn’t a perfect negative split). I still kept the effort “easy” until near the end.

Wednesday, it was foggy, which means 100% humidity, so it was pretty miserable. My legs felt surprisingly OK, though. For the “easy” part, I kept a fairly steady pace after I got through the first mile. I picked up the effort on the last two miles, going hard but not all out until close to the very end. Considering the weather, I was pleased with the results.

On Friday, the weather was its usual terrible self. My legs felt OK. My paces weren’t quite as consistent as I’d like, but there was nothing too out of the ordinary, and I think I did a decent job of keeping the effort consistent. I had gotten some feedback from my coach to not speed up at the end of my easy runs. I felt like I had to make a conscious effort to not pick up the pace at the end, but it seemed to work.

Saturday was tough, because it’s a long run in July.

It was really hot, 75 and humid, but there was an occasional breeze. My legs felt OK until near the end.

I had Gu at 5 and 10 miles. I stopped for water roughly once per mile.

I tried to focus on my effort rather than pace, and I think I did OK for the easy part of the run. I made it through mile 12 at a moderate effort, but in mile 13, the heat was getting to me, and I decided to walk and slowly jog for the rest of the mile so I could hopefully finish strong with mile 14, and it seemed to work. In retrospect, with the heat, maybe I should have adjusted and run 12 miles easy with 2 moderate at the end. But I still got through it and managed to finish fairly strong.

It would be nice if I could get all the way through a long run without struggling like that. I’ll get plenty of chances to get it right.

Next week, it’s the end of July. (Good riddance.) I’ll post a monthly wrap-up later in the week. August will be pretty rough, too, but I’ll figure out a way to get through it.