The week may have started off a little rocky, but I just focused on moving forward and making the week progressively better!

I decided to focus on some of the positive upcoming things in the coming weeks:

• This is my husband’s last week of 6 day work weeks. Over the next 4 weeks he will be on a schedule much more like mine. It’s been far too long.
• Long weekend approaching (beach trip maybe!?)
• Celebrating both my parent’s birthdays in February!
• Some great news received! (more to come on that later in the week)
• Possibly making some race decisions for 2015

Each day I think it is so important to keep focused on the positive, no matter what may be in our way at the current moment.

 

Running this week started a bit later. Looking back on it was probably a good thing. The past two weeks I have run 56 and 57 miles respectively. A bit high, so it was time for a step back week. I didn’t change up my workouts; I just cut the miles back a bit. Taking of on Monday helped that, so for the most part it didn’t really seem like I did.

Here is a look back at the past week:

 

Monday

We all know what happened here. I took an impromptu day off.

Instead of worrying about it too much, I just focused on prepping and eating for my workout on Tuesday.

Tuesday

I got back on my running game by getting in a mile repeat workout. Most my workouts have been shorter recently, so I decided to take my intervals out a little bit.

Simple workout really:

2 mile warm up
4 x 1 mile repeats (7:03, 6:58, 6:53, 6:53)
3:30 recovery between each
2 mile cool down

In total, I came in just over 9 miles. My goal pace going into the repeats was 6:55. I started the first one off slower as I usually to see how I was feeling and then progressively sped up.

This workout wasn’t easy by any means, but I pushed through it and felt pretty proud at the end.

 

Wednesday

This was my first day running back outside. I haven’t gotten my pepper spray in yet (I was so glad to hear how many of you already run with pepper spray) so I opted to get up a little earlier and run with my husband.

I ran the first 2 miles or so with him and then went off on my own while he did his workout. I met him back at the end to run back home. My goal was to take this one very slow. I ended up having a pretty easy time doing that because I was SO cold. Actually to be honest my hands were so cold!

I wore 2 pairs of gloves and it just didn’t seem to be enough.

I ended up doing just over 10 miles averaging around a 9:22 pace.

I notice a lot of my easier runs tend to be slower in the dark, early mornings and that’s okay. If my last marathon training cycle taught me anything it’s that your easy day pace doesn’t matter.

I couldn’t warm up the rest of the day! I had to wear my husband’s heaviest jacket to work and I don’t think I took it off all day!

 

Thursday

 This workout was a tough one. I wanted to come up with a workout that had varying intervals because sometimes I need a little boredom buster workout later in the week.

I also knew that I wanted shorter and faster intervals from what I did on Tuesday.

Here is what my workout looked like:

2.5 mile warm up
3 x 800 (6:40 pace)
3 x 600 (6:30 pace)
3 x 400 (6:20 pace)
1.5 mile cool down

Overall, it was a tough but good workout. I actually had more to the workout planned. After the 400’s I was supposed to do a 3 x 200 at 6:10 pace and the finish it off with 10 x 10 second strides.

I was tired. That is why I ended up extending out my warm up trying to get my legs to get with it. Even on the week I got more rest than normal, my legs still were tired. Sometimes that’s just how it is.

I was still happy to get a good workout in, even if it wasn’t what had been originally planned. In total, just over 9 miles.

 

Friday

At first when I ended up taking off Monday I played around with the idea of running on Friday instead to make the week more normal. My husband strongly urged me against this primarily so that my body would still stay on the same schedule and so that I wouldn’t get in the habit of adding extra miles and days.

I can say he knows me really well.

As per usual, Friday ended up being a rest day.

Saturday

I knew going into Saturday that I wanted to stick to 12 miles to keep my mileage where I wanted it to be for a step back week and I wanted to do something with a big more effort assuming my body cooperated.

Whenever I start any run the first mile is always the slowest. I make sure to run it as slow as I need to get myself into it. As the next mile begin I slowly start picking up the pace.

I decided to just run this at a moderate effort and see what that ended up being.

I was amazed at how well my legs felt. It also helped that we had pretty amazing weather for the day! In total I ran 12.10 miles in just slightly over 1 hour and 40 minutes. That’s an 8:17 average! Most of the miles hovered under 8:10 which is close to my previous marathon pace! Many of the miles really didn’t feel like I was working. Maybe those workouts are working after all!

I finally got my Garmin Connect Ap synced to my phone and here is a look at the breakdown.

Only miles 2-11 would fit on the screen. Mile 1 was a 9:20 and mile 12 was a 8:02.

A few notes on the miles:

• Mile 6 was slower because I had 2 different run ins with dogs. Thankfully they were nice dogs but still had to stop a couple times because when a dog is barking and running at you, I’ve learned stopping seems to be most effective.
• Mile 7 was almost completely down hill which is why that mile was so much quicker than the rest

Also, thanks to the wonderful commenters that told me that the Forerunner 220 has a Live Track feature! I have been playing with it and look forward to using it when I’d like my husband to be able to track me in the future!

Sunday

I unfortunately have a funeral to go to about an hour from home so I’m sticking with an easy 8 miles a little bit earlier than normal.

 

I ended up with just around 48 miles for the week. The goal was to stay in the mid to upper 40’s this week as a bit of a step back week in training. I didn’t realize just how much my mileage had picked up the past couple weeks until I sat down and looked back on it.

I was ready for a bit of a step back, and not running on Monday allowed me to do this pretty easily!

 

How did your running go this week?

What was your best and worst run?