Alright, let’s check out how I did this past
week with my training!!!
• Tuesday: no run, worked overtime Monday
night.
• Wednesday: sooo…I was originally going to
do a 7 mile total distance with 1 mile w/u, 5 miles at HMGP, 1 mile c/d.
Then I set out for my run and changed it to a 2 mile w/u, 4 miles at HMGP, 1
mile c/d. Then I changed it to an easy run, just logging miles.
Then I changed it to a steady pace run. Then I changed to keeping all the
miles faster than 10:15. Then (holy crap I was indecisive about this
run)…THEN I decided I wanted to do a progression run. So that’s what I
did. My splits were awesome. I started with mile 1 at a 10:13 pace
and ended with mile 7 at an 8:55 pace. Oh yea! That’s the other
thing…I want the second half of South Padre Island Marathon to be faster than
the first half is.
• Thursday: no run, worked overtime
Wednesday night.
• Friday: 4 miles, steady paced between 9:30
and 9:39. I love how much faster I’m getting and how much easier it is
for me to maintain the faster paces. The fact that fall temps are
starting to show up helps a LOT.
• Saturday: nothing happened. Today
was jam-packing with hanging out with a friend and then going to bed early.
• Sunday: yet again I had a race and a long
run scheduled for the same day. Haha. I actually really like doing
this. It breaks up my long run into 2-3 parts and helps my body to learn
to keep going and start back up after it’s already tired. I think it
makes me more efficient. Anyway, I had an 8K race (approximately 5
miles). So I arrived at the site a little over an hour early and knocked
out 9 miles. Then I ran the race. Then I logged the final 5 miles I
needed to make a grand total of 19! When I got home, I added up the times
from each of the 3 separate runs for a grand total of 3:00:06 hrs. Then I
plugged that into a pace calculator and discovered my overall average pace was
9:29!!! I have no doubts that, weather and temperature permitting, I can
hit that 9:43 pace for the marathon next month! I’m totally stoked
now! During the race portion of the 19 miles, I ran my fastest 5k (per my
Garmin) at 26:45, my fastest mile at 8:08 (even though the split break down
says that mile was 8:04…so I dunno what’s going on with that), and my fastest
8K at 43:46! Also, let’s just go back to the fact that I logged 19 miles
in basically 3 hours flat. What, what, what?!?!?! That’s amazing to
me that I’m capable of that, even though at this stage in training to run a
marathon at a 9:43 pace I really shouldn’t be surprised at that. It’s
like my weight loss, it’s taking some getting used to that I’m actually that
fast.
• Monday: 4 easy miles for a shakeout
run. I wanted to go between 10:45 and 11:00 for this run so in order to
make it interesting for myself and less of a drag that I was going so “slow,” I
decided to make a game out of it and try to hit the exact same pace each
mile. I almost succeeded. Mile 2 was 1 second faster than the other
3.
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I honestly couldn’t be any happier with how
this training cycle is going. I mean, the past couple weeks I’ve sort of
struggled with motivation a tiny bit. Not much, but it was there and I
noticed it, so it was enough to affect me. I have slacked off here and
there with my speed work and that makes no sense to me because I LOOOOOOVE
speed work. I love doing sprints and I love doing progression runs and
steady pace and tempo runs too. They’re great ways to challenge myself
and, well, I do love a good challenge. I mean, come on, I have the quote
“we choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are
hard.” BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD. Like, seriously, I don’t take the
easy path or the easy way out. I like to work for it, I like to EARN
it. I want those bragging rights. I have fairly aggressive progressing
goals for myself over the next 14 months and in order to hit those goals I have
to PUSH myself and challenge myself and do the difficult things that I don’t
necessarily always want to do. But, let me tell you, there is rarely a
time where once I’ve started running that within the first .5 to 1 mile I’m not
all into it and loving it. It happens, but it’s rare. And speaking
of those times, I’ve come up with a new mantra, or pep talk for myself for
during those moments of suck. “the slower you go, the longer it’s going
to suck.” Haha! Not too peppy, but it gets the job done and helps
me kick it up a gear.
This past week, I went online and created a
pace band for South Padre Island Marathon. My official goal is a 4:15
finish. GULP! If I pull that off, it’ll be a huge PR by over 20
minutes!!! OMG. That’s so scary and intimidating when you think
about it. But, honestly, I’m putting in the work, so it shouldn’t be an
impossibility for me to achieve that hoped for finish time. It’s “just”
an average pace of 9:43 per mile. Easy peasy, lemon squeezie,
right? Riiiiiiiight. It’s a fairly flat course so once I’ve done my
w/u across the causeway and make it onto the island itself, I can crank up the
speed and zip right along, hopefully to the tune of a 22 minute PR!
The last 3 weeks, my long runs have been
segmented, broken up into 2-3 parts because I had either a 5k or an 8k race
that I had signed up for scheduled for those days. So I’d get to the race
sites early, knock out 9-11 miles pre-race, run the race (2 of them netting me
all sorts of new PRs), then for 2 out of the 3, finishing up with a few more
miles. I have to say that is a pretty awesome way to do a long run.
One, it breaks up the monotony. Two, you get some speed work thrown into
the middle of a long run. Three, your legs get a little rest in between
segments. The rest is good for 2 reasons. Reason 1 is that, well,
your legs get some rest. Reason 2 is that your legs are fatigued from the
previous running segment, so when you start the next segment, even though you
rested, your legs are fatigued so now you’re working on your resilience.
However, I won’t be doing any more long runs in this method between now and SPI
next month. I do have 2 more races scheduled on Sundays between now and
then, but for the first one later this month, I also have a 223 mile relay that
I’ll be completing with 11 other people and in which I will be running about
17.5 miles total, so I’m going to count that as my long run and then just run
the 5k to the best of my ability. I have hopes of snagging another PR or
at least earning and AG award…if the field is as small as last year, then I
should be able to do that. The other race is a 10 mile race and is a mere
7 days before SPI, so is my last long run pre-race. And I won’t be racing
it or attempting a 10 mile PR. Just a nice easy run.
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