running for my mind

Scheduled rest day.

Felt good to have a nice relaxing Easter!

I felt good this past week. Was probably the best running week I have ever had. I was able to hit all of my goals or exceed them in a bit.

Goals this week - I am going to bump up the miles just a bit and shoot for 70-73. I am shooting for mile repeats on Tuesday. I think I will do 4 x 1 mile repeats at a 6:00 min pace or just under. This past week I did a 7.5 mile tempo so I want to bump that up a bit, but don't know by how much. I will either do 8 or 8.5. I plan on doing a 20 miler on Saturday again too. Should be a good week!

10.5 easy miles this morning. - 4 solo and 6.5 with Tyler.

When I left my house at 5:55 the wind was blowing and it was starting to rain. It got worse and during the first mile I thought about calling it quits many times. I looked up at the clouds and said, "You can rain all you want in an hour and a half!" By mile 2 the wind had stopped and the rain was easing up. The last 5 miles were completely dry with no wind. I doubt the clouds listened to me at all, but it was a nice outcome! 

10 miles - 4 x 1 mile repeats sandwiched between a warmup and cool down. 

I went to bed last night hoping that I wouldn't wake up to a complete downpour. Luckily it was only drizzling so I headed to the track. Thankfully, Adam met me there. He ran casually around the inside of the track on the turf so it was nice to chat with him in-between each of the repeats and to run the warmup and cool down with him.

I had a goal to run the first repeat at a 6:00 min pace and then run each of the 3 following repeats about 5 seconds faster, running the last one at 5:45. I was stoked to pull this off and do even better by a couple of seconds. 

Repeat Distance Time
1 1 mile 5:54
2 1 mile 5:49
3 1 mile 5:45
4 1 mile 5:40 

10 easy miles - It was a super clear morning. Felt a little colder than what my phone said it was. Ran 1.5 solo and then 8.5 with Tyler.

11.75 miles - 1.5 warmup, 8.5 tempo, 1.75 cool down.

Adam was nice enough to join me for the majority of the tempo. It was nice to have some company on this tougher run for sure.  

Overall, I felt good on this tempo run. However, I went through some ups and downs during the run. The third mile of the tempo was actually our fastest even though it had the most uphill. I pushed it up the hill and felt good about it, but then I felt the worst during mile 4. That mile was mostly flat with a little uphill, but I did not feel great during it. My left quad felt a little odd for about a mile. Thankfully, around mile 5 I loosened back up and felt really smooth. I was only planning on doing 8 miles when I awoke, but decided to go an extra .5 because I was feeling good enough at the end. During the run I mentioned to Adam that 4 months ago I never would have believed anyone if they told me that I could do this workout successfully. Needless to say, I am stoked that I did it!

10.5 easy miles with Adam, Brayden, and Ashley.

Was fun to get out with a great group. We beat the storm by minutes and it was about 10 degrees cooler at the end of the run than the beginning. 

20 miles - almost 10 to Brayden and Ashley's house, they joined me for 6, and I finished up solo. (I knew I had to run .14 to even up my miles for the week so I did a little cool down after the 20 miles so I could count that.)

Felt good overall, which actually surprised me because of having so many miles already on my legs this week. My quads were sore from the beginning and didn't really ease up much during the run. I attribute this to cumulative fatigue from the miles I logged this week and the week before and the months stacked on that. The fatigue didn't affect me too much though. I was able to hold a good pace and even decided to give it a little kick the last 4 miles. I was happy to see my average HR was 154. Now I get to sit around the rest of today and tomorrow and relax and recover!