[S]he Conquers Who Endures

5 mile recovery run 9:10 pace. The back of my right leg where my hammie meets my glute is acting up on me again. I don't think I have a tear, I think it's from the long run with the hills and the speed. This week is recovery week so I'll try to back off my paces and choose flatter routes. Hopefully that will help. :)

8 mile run at steady state pace 7:50 min/mi average. Puddle-jumping around the path because of the rain. My hammie felt sooo much better and I didn't want to push too hard this run because I was worried about it. I think I was "guarding" it during my run subconsciously anyway. It's recovery week so the decrease mileage AND intensity will do me good. Supercompensate, baby! :)

AM: Bikram

PM: massage

Recovery Wednesday is the theme today. :) Hammie felt 100% today during Bikram. I think I say this after every Bikram session, but I love Bikram. It's such a great tool to gauge your body's status at a much more magnified level. I can tell what areas are tightening up on me and what areas are weak. My hammie has done better than it has in a number of weeks during some of the poses that gave me minor trouble. I also noticed my right quad is starting to tighten up on me, and I didn't notice that otherwise. Looking back to stretching, I have been stretching my quads less to focus more on my hammies! Gotta even things out. Could also be tighter if I was compensating my gait to protect my hammie. I love Bikram! :) 

1.5 mile warmup then 4x1200m with 600m recovery jog at the indoor track (200m). I am just entering the mesocycle to start track workouts and I normally track my pace outside with my Garmin. I wasn't a runner in high school, so the track math is new to me. Hence, I had no idea what pace I was going. I just went by effort. 50 sec around the 200 m track felt hard but like I could push a little faster. Calculating my paces later I did 1200m (well the first was 1400m cause I can't count) at 6:38, 6:42, 6:38, 6:32 min/mi paces! I'm pretty happy about this. The last time I did 1200m repeats was in April and my old PR was 7:11 min/mi pace, which ended up being close to my 5k race pace in April (7:18 min/mi). The marathon BQ is my primary goal, but I'd love to hit sub 21:00 for a 5k (6:45 min/mi) so I can get into corral A for the Shamrock Shuffle!! I think that's doable especially since I'm just STARTING track workouts again! :)

Oh and if you add up the total mileage for my repeats including my extra lap, I ran 5k in 20:38! I'm getting close to my 5k goal! :) 

After sleeping on the couch (parents in town) and having a track workout last night, I thought I'd be dragging on this recovery run. Um, I had to focus on SLOWING down to hit above 9:00 min/mi recovery pace! Whut?! Is that from super compensation from this recovery week or from muscle memory from last nights track session? Who knows but the run felt good. I did 8x100m strides, and didn't break any records but didn't break anything in my legs either. :P Paces for strides were: 6:00, 5:39, 6:08, 5:26, 5:48, 5:34, 5:49, 5:18 min/mi. Finished with 1 mile easy which felt super weird after the strides. I think that's from my muscles working more efficiently! :)

Cut back week! 14 miles at 8:14 min/mi average pace. Felt pretty easy in the beginning but not as easy as I thought towards the end. Guess that's why the training plan is structured that way! And, another week bites the dust. I'm so stoked for next week's turkey trot and 22 mile long run!!!