[S]he Conquers Who Endures

5 lovely easy miles on the Chicago lakefront. My calves were pretty sore from dancing in heels all night, but they loosened up and my run felt totally zen by the end. I love/hate recovery runs. They feel so so good, but then they are over so soon and I have to wait so long to run again!! Finished up with 40 pushups and 5 min planks. 

Thus the conclusion of an epic week for me. I hit 70 miles for the first time ever!! And, it felt easier than my 52 miler weeks back in Nov/Dec. I couldn't be happier with my training right now. :)

This was supposed to be a threshold run 2x15:00 with 5:00 easy. It turned into a junk fartlek run because my body was just not feeling it. After a 2 mile warmup, I tried to hit 6:44 min/mi pace for the first 15:00 interval. My legs were burning so bad, I could only make it to 7-8 mins. I dropped the pace way down to recover and decided maybe I could turn the workout into a 4x1 mile at 8k race pace. I tried a 6:44 pace, then had to drop it to 6:49. I couldn't make it a mile. I dropped the pace to recover and tried a higher pace, 7:18, I think I hit a mile with that one but it was so tough. I recovered then tried a progressive, started at 7:30, after a quarter mile I dropped it to 7:26. Finally I felt like I was hitting a threshold pace, but this pace is sooooo much slower than last week! 

The run is over and I didn't feel spectacular and couldn't hit the paces I normally hit. I'm just going to put this run into perspective, I've been running super fast and my run Sat was probably a harder effort than I should have run, I MUST transition into lower drop/lighter shoes if I want to save my hamstrings (according to my physical therapist and video gait analysis) this run was in shoes I don't normally run thresholds in, I was running a 1970s treadmill so who knows how accurately calibrated it is, and I am leaving my fiance today after an amazing weekend to head back to working in Cambridge. 

Moving forward, my plan is to pick my head back up, focus on working into shoes that will benefit me in the long run, and hit some hills this week. The hills will do me good to not focus on pace and pay more attention to effort. :) 

AM: 4 easy miles on the treadmill. Kept the pace at 8:57 min/mi and changed the incline every 0.5 mile to keep me entertained: 1-1.5-0-0.5-1-1.5-2-0%. My legs still feel a little heavy and my hips are awfully tight. I spent some extra time stretching and foam rolling to work out the kinks. It's an uneasy feeling to have "dead" legs for a couple days in a row, but I hit 70 miles last week, my highest mileage per week of my life, so that puts things into perspective and makes things more comforting. I'm planning another 70 miles this week, so adjusting my pace and being patient with my legs is the ticket I think. :)

PM: 4 easy miles on the treadmill at 1% grade, 8:45 min/mi pace with 8x0.1 mile strides at 6:00 min/mi and 0.1 mile recoveries at 8:41 min/mi pace. Feeling good in the Kinvaras!

12 hilly, slippery, easy miles through Newton. The weather report warned there'd be black ice, and by golly about 90% of this route was a sheet of black ice! I decided to go ahead with the run because it would force me to slow my pace and because I really need to accumulate some downhill mileage in these 4 mm drop shoes if I am going to run Big Sur in them (I have been running in a 12 mm drop shoe). I'm so glad I ran this!! These shoes are awesome on downhill and I can actually midstrike in them!! The first half was a net downhill running the reverse BM course and modifying the route to include a 135 ft downhill/uphill and I ran the second half faster than the first. The black ice sure was a blessing on this run, it also caused me to modify my gait overstriding on black ice will knock you on your bum! Hopefully my legs will remember this form.

Even though my pace was slow (8:50 min/mi AP), I'm pretty happy about this run. I lost track of which Newton Hill I was on because I couldn't tell if I was running uphill or downhill sometimes (based on effort) and my legs felt like jello but not strained at the end. I could tell which hill was HH though! Try running up that one on ice!! :)

Elevation gain: 558 ft 

Track workout: 1200-800-800-1200-800-800-1200m, jog half the distance for recovery. 1200s were supposed to be 5k race pace, 800s were supposed to be 8 sec per 800 faster than 5k race pace. After my junked up threshold run on Monday, I was worried about running this in the 4 mm drop shoes. I started out conservatively even though the last couple weeks I felt like I was holding back running with the group of girls I normally run with. After the first 2 repeats I got into a groove and somehow at the last second decided to lead the pack for the 2nd 800m. We were targeting 47 sec per lap on the 200 m track, my first lap was 44 sec. Whoops. I decided to slow just a little and just go with it. Well, I ended up breaking my 800m PR during this workout...THREE TIMES!!! 

My splits were: 4:55.7-3:11.1-3:04.9-4:47.5-3:06.6-3:06.9-4:49.4

Paces: 6:36-6:24-6:12-6:26-6:16-6:16-6:27 min/mi so 6:23 min/mi for 4.23 miles. This felt really good after Monday's crash session. It kinda goes to show you what you can do with a taper too. I wanted to average sub7 pace for the Shamrock 8k, I'm pretty confident that will happen. I plan on actually tapering for this one, so I have no idea what pace to target!  

6 miles easy loosening up the tight legs after a great track workout last night.

22 miles Hopkinton to Newton. This was an amazing run! One lane of traffic was shut down most of the way for the runners, hundreds of runners! Cops were directing traffic, and people were cheering for us. I was not expecting this and wanted to take pictures on my training run! Haha. This is my first long run in the 4mm drop shoes. I knew it was a gamble, but I won this one. My calves were burning so bad because they have to adjust to the shoe but my hamstrings felt surprisingly really, really good the entire run. I ran with my girls and had trouble keeping up with them once we got to Newton. Just goes to show the improvements I can make continuing to run with them. Hopefully I can recover before my tempo run Monday!! That downhill took a lot out of my legs, but was necessary to protect them for Big Sur. AP: 8:01 min/mi. Oh yeah, a PR for 22 miles for me, and coming off my second week in a row of 70 mpw! :)