Denouement

Great weigh in for a Monday I must say, especially on a Monday after i gorged on choc cake I made.  Ok, confessional over.

Ran after kids went to school.  Metro after run especially embarrassing since I was sweating badly, the metro was near full (not packed like body contact thank goodness).  Some guy discretely moved his suitcase away from me as my sweat accumulated below me.  I stopped counting drops off my body after 16.  Bleh.  Changed clothes then went to gym for light weights and a bit of core.  Did 5 pull ups!  First time I have gotten to 5 in this marathon cycle.  I have never done more than 5, and I have only gotten to five a couple of times.  For me pull ups are a sign of fitness because they reflect my strength and body composition.  Can't pull up too much dead weight.  So I would really like to go above five in this cycle as a token of my fitness.  It would be a great confidence boost.

PM: core workout.  Ben also massaged parts of my legs and did assistive stretching.  I have been teaching him massage and assisted stretching, been paying attention to why my sports massage guy has been doing.  Ben has moved up from unskilled labor (that's $4/hr) to semi skilled ($5/hr).  He's actually helping and becoming part of my team.   

AM: got lost on my morning run, so a leisurely 9k run, stopping several times to ask for directions.  2 out of 8 people were able/willing to point me in the right direction.  Run was just 5 minutes longer than intended. 5.62 miles in 45ish minutes.  Got kids off to school then did 40-45 minutes of leisurely pool running with Ali at HKSI.  Haven't done this in a while, didn't feel like I needed cross training, but it was a good opportunity to check out the facilities.

PM: 6k warm up, 5 x 1 mile tempo intervals @ 10k pace, 400 m in between. Goal was to negative split and get fatigued by the duration of the workout.  I felt going into this like my true 10k speed is still close to 6:00, so wanted to start at 5:55, then cut down from there if I could, even a modest cut down would be good.  McMillan's calculator at 2:46 marathon puts these at 5:41-5:53.  I did 5:56, 5:53, then my watch went crazy on me again.  I was so frustrated but Coach Paul picked up the slack for me again and called out 400 splits for me.  I'd much rather have splits every 200m for a workout like this, but I guess if I want 200m splits I should bring a functional watch to the workout.  Anyway.  On #3 jumped out too fast on the first lap, but then settled in.  Got a 5:47 or 5:48, don't remember which.  So far so good.  Fourth was 5:43, then finished with a 5:38.  Splits on the last mile were 86, 85, 84, 82.   Felt hard but not killer. 5-6k cool down.  

Treated myself to four 2kg bags of ice (abt $8US worth) for my first HK ice bath.  Unfortunately, the water doesn't come out very cold out of the tap so I was only able to get the water temperature down to 62F, so that was a failed attempt at an ice bath.  Sounds like a decent ice bath will be about $14 and an arm workout. 

Woke up early to met Roberto, but he was unable to run so ran on my own.  No music, tired from the workout from the night before.  Started over 5:00 pace, ended up with 4:49/k pace overall.  Took a quick shower at home, then hit the gym for some weights, did 5 pull ups again (yeah!) and some core.  

We live on campus of the paul's University. So the other spouses in this apartment complex have a ladie's group, so I went to my first ladie's breakfast.  It was potluck and three of the ladies were Indian so I was able to eat four indian breakfast dishes, all quite good, and I had a hong kong tart that was to die for.  

Sports massage in the afternoon.  Felt nice and loose after that.  Core workout in the evening. 

AM:  Woke up at 5am, ran 5.1 miles.  Looked at a map before I went out, still didn't get home on time but did know where I was 90% of the time, got a bit lost finding the metro at the end of my run.  got an email reminding me of a meeting tonight for Mickie that i can't miss, so I had to cancel on two women I was going to meet for my hard workout tonight.  Which meant treadmill workout in the afternoon.  I took a nice nap.  Something magical about naps that are over 60 min.  Mine was 70 and heavenly.

PM: 3.75 mile warm up then 3 miles HM pace, 1 mile 7:30 pace 2 miles 10k pace.  Didn't wan to overshoot paces since my Saturday workout is going to be really hard.  HM paces were 6:11, 6:07, 6:07 on TM with 1% grade.  I was afraid 7:30 pace would be hard, but it felt heavenly after the HM paced miles.  7:30 for .75 then was kicked off the treadmill, had to relocate to the annex. Probably took 3 minutes to get resituated.  The annex is small, just three treadmills, two big and one baby looking one. The two big ones were taken and I was upset because the baby one looked like it might not be able to do sub six miles.  But it performed well, my little treadmill that could. I ramped right up to 10.1, and increased each half mile, so first mile was about 5:55, second mile was about 5:48.  Then 30 min cool down.  Very embarrassing to get so sweaty in front of other people who were not working out that hard.  Oh well.  Got it done.

12.95k (7.92? miles) around my house.  Hilly and still got lost a bit.  I will not let these streets nor these hills beat me! 7:34 ave pace

AM:  Met three ladies on the Island on Bowen Road on the Island for a thirds progression.  I hadn't run with any of the ladies, but they were great.  Bowen Road is 4k long and mostly flat, so lots of islanders go there, so there was some dodging.  There are 500m and 1k markers along it (supposedly) but I could only consistently see the start, the 2k and the end.  Sometimes I saw the others, though I don't think I ever saw the 3k mark.  Plan was 4:40-5:00 pace for the first third, 4:20 for the second third, and 3:55-4:00 for the last third (40 min each).  Ran abt 8.5k in 40:47, abt 4:48 pace gradually getting faster as we went.  Then ran abt 4:17 pace for the next 40.5 min (9.5k), then was on my own for the last third, I didn't get full splits because the watch was not reliable.  I did confirm the first 4k was just under 4 min/k pace, and I think I kept it around there.  Ran around 10k in the last 40min.  Then had to pick up water bottle and get off Bowen Road so jogged that portion slowly (2.5k).  Looks like accidentally ran about 30.5 k, but the last 2.5 were really junk miles :/  

PM: weights, core, 40 min water jogging in lieu of afternoon run.  Legs felt dead right after long run so thought I would back off instead of trying to rack up the miles.  They chased me out of the deep pool so I went back and forth in the deepest part of a not so deep pool (1.5 m) so I could reach a bit, but it was still gentler on my legs than another run, so I guess it was ok.