General aerobic run. 6:16 am, 33°F, 61% humidity, no wind. My husband is on spring break this week, so he has agreed to drive to seminary all week. Without the need to drive to seminary or to even be home before the other boys leave for school, I lack the motivation to get up really early to run. Also, I had a hard time going to sleep last night on account of the nap I took at noon yesterday. I ran the County Line Road loop. I had to stop at more intersections that I normally do on account of the increased traffic at the later time. My heel felt fine when I got up this morning and during the run and was just slightly wonky after the run. The big toe is another issue. It started bugging me after about 6 miles. My training plan has 3 Fridays in the upcoming weeks in which it specifies a race. Two of them say an 8K to 15K race, and the last one is an 8K to 10K race. The schedule actually has them on Saturdays, but I've pushed the whole schedule back a day to put long runs on Saturdays and have Sundays off. I've been wondering what to do about these workouts, but I've got a solution for one of them now. On May 8, which is the day after the second 8K to 15K race day, there are two races on the Highline Canal Trail, where I usually run on Saturdays. There's a 10K at 8 am and a 5K at 9 am. I think I'm going to run both of them and pretend that it's a 15K race with a short rest in the middle. I'll try to run both of them at 15K pace instead of at 10K pace and 5K pace. Here are stats for today's run: AP: 9:26. Splits: 10:14, 9:54, 9:50, 9:34, 9:33, 9:05, 9:02, 8:51, 8:52. It was another unintentional gradual progression run except for that last mile. I realized recently that the Newport marathon doesn't allow headphones, so I decided to run this week without my MP3 player. I've been wearing it on pretty much every run recently. Running without music today enabled me to focus a little more on my proprioceptive cue, but it which kind of a tricky, weird one. They are getting more difficult as I get towards the end of the list. There are three more after this one. With that said, here is this week's cue, "Butt Squeeze," from Brain Training for Runners by Matt Fitzgerald: "In the instant before your foot makes contact with the ground, contract the muscles in the hip and buttock on that side of your body and keep them engaged throughout the ground contact phase of the stride. This proprioceptive cue will enable you to maintain greater stability in the hips, pelvis, lower spine, and perhaps even the knees as you run, and will minimize wasteful (asymmetrical) long axis rotations."
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