Emily's training blog

I've been lazy this week.  After about four days of no sleep and 16 hours in a car, and a wedding that went into the wee small hours of the morning, it has taken me a couple of days to get my focus and motivation back.  I'm a little disappointed in myself.  I can't let life derail me so much.  I still need to work on consistency in training.

Today I ran up to Valley Park and ran a fartlek ladder of 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1 minutes with a 1-1-2-2-3-2-2-1-1 minutes recovery.  I usually run this workout with one to one recovery, so this is the first time I've reduced the times.  I felt pretty good, so maybe I wasn't running so fast on the quick parts.  I probably need to do some measured intervals as a check point.  I've just been focusing on longer runs and more strength oriented workouts in preparation for longer races.  Plus, I'm trying to not get injured.  I ran a two mile cool down for ten miles total.

My brother who just got married is coming with his new wife today to spend the weekend.  I'm excited, but more family commitments are going to make training tough. 

After a day of cross country practice and touring downtown with Joel and Jessica, I headed to the health club for an evening run.  I did my favorite progression run.  I started at 8.5 mph.  For the first 20 minutes I upped the pace .1 every 5 minutes.  For the next twenty minutes I increased pace every four minutes.   The last part of the run I increased every three minutes, and the last mile, every quarter mile.  That put me at 10.0 mph at the end of the run, and 53:05 for eight miles.  I wanted to do something quicker paced so I don't get sluggish for Saturday's race.  I'm weird.  I like the treadmill.

Way more sore after yesterday than I thought I would be.  I'm very tight in the hips.  I ran an un-timed easy four mile route.  I'm hoping to feel better for tomorrow's race.  I should be pretty tapered after these last couple of weeks of limited training.  I ran my SLCC route.  Joel and Jessica want to go to Lagoon, but I think I will opt out to prepare for tomorrow.

I really wanted to use this race to measure my progress.  My goal was under 18:00 and top three.  Two things I didn't count on . . . the course had two nasty hills, making it a little slower course than usual, and that the course would be cut short.  I warmed up three miles around the stadium.  Then did what felt like a million strides while a really long flag ceremony took place.  The race started with a big cannon boom, which scared everyone.  I took off hard.  The race climbs less than a mile into the course, but there is a downhill on State Street after that.  I tried to push this part hard, because I am a strong downhill runner.  My first mile was 5:38, which was a bit off my goal pace of 5:45.  I was hoping to be 11:30 through mile two, which was flat.  At this point, Amber Andrews and Stefanie Talley had pulled away from me.  I was running with Sariah Long through this mile.  Imagine my surprise when I looked at my watch at mile two and saw that it was just rounding out to 10:00.  I knew we were off, but I hoped that it would even out at the end.  The last mile was tough with a slight uphill followed by a very large uphill to the stadium.  I just tried to stay tough here and work up the hill.  Sariah pulled ahead, but seemed to stay about the same distance ahead of me, which makes me wish I had been tougher and stayed with her.  10 seconds out of the money is not fun!!!

I knew the time was wrong when I ran under 17:00.  But, I know that I have progressed well over the last four weeks.  I need to increase mileage, add in some speedwork, and get consistent.  Progress is not coming fast enough for me . . . but it is coming!