Back in the saddle?

Weather.com said it was 73 degrees when I got back, but it felt much hotter.  My husband and I slept 10 hours last night and the night before, which felt GREAT, but it will make it hard to get up tomorrow morning to do hill sprints-yuck!

Today I did 6 easy miles in 58:56, a 9:49 average.  I am still very impatient and wish I was getting faster.  Of course, I am increasing my mileage too.  Oh well.  I wasn't sore from the 5K at all while running, but I could feel it when I was stretching at the end.

We did two form drills at the end.  I'm sure our neighbors got a good laugh out of it!

Today was hill training (notice I got up early!).  We did a 1.5-mile warmup at a very easy pace, then dynamic stretching, then 6 x 90-second hills at 1-mile pace (7:27 for me) with 2 minutes active recovery after each repeat.  I tried to keep track of the distance of each repeat so I could keep track of my pace, but it was hard.  I need to figure out how to do that.  I think some repeats were too fast and some too slow.

I cheated a little and added an extra minute of recovery after the third repeat, and another minute after the fifth, I think.  We did an approximate 1.3-mile cooldown at the end.

Next week is the last week of hills, and then we start going to the track!

I slept 10 hours Saturday night and 10 hours Sunday night.  Wouldn't you know it-I couldn't sleep at all last night!  I got MAYBE 5 hours of sleep, so I'm starting the week out tired.  I'll get to bed early tonight.

PM-various stretches to combat potential stride problems resulting from spending all day in an office chair.  And I'm really starting to get intrigued by the barefoot running...

Sore, sore, so sore!  My glutes were on fire, and everything else started hurting during the run.  I had no idea hill sprints would make me so sore!  I need to take it easy so I don't injure myself, but I also need to be building up the miles.  I'm supposed to run close to 40 miles this week, but that would mean almost doubling my miles, which I'm not going to do.  I'll try to top out around 30.

Total time was 40:55, average 10:15 pace-yuck!  I saw a big rabbit about 2 blocks from my house and a BIG "lender foreclosure" sign about 1.7 miles from my house.  I hope I don't see too many more of those!

Zero so far today.  I had planned on running this morning (and I woke up before my alarm went off at 5:30-yeah!), but I'm listening to my body, which is sore and tired.  The plan is to try a few easy miles tonight, maybe go to spinning tomorrow, and do a long run on Saturday to finish off the week at 30 miles.

Whew!  I can't believe how slow I am!  I'm hoping it's just because my body is having to re-adjust to higher-volume training.  I ran the first 3 miles easy at about 10:00 pace (which should have been faster).  BUT I didn't try to push it.  I decided to pick it up for the last mile and ran 8:54.  Frankly, that felt harder than marathon pace.  I have a long way to go!  It was a beautiful morning, though.

With the faster mile, my average pace was 9:42.

Tomorrow I am running 10 miles with my group, which will put me right around 30 for the week.

Whew!  I'm going to pay for this one.  This was my longest run since the marathon in January!  I've been LAZY!

I ran with my group, and we had about 10 people: a good turnout.  We started at 6:30, but we are going to have to make it earlier with this heat.  One hour after I finished, it was 81 degrees, which doesn't make sense because I was SO hot during the run.  I have been running fine in well over 80 degrees lately, so I'm not sure why I felt so hot today.

I really struggled to maintain a 10:00 pace for the first half.  I hit the five-mile mark at 50:31, only because I ran two miles with a couple of people who were running about 9:45 pace.  I was able to really pick it up (relatively) in the second half, and I ran the last five miles in 49:00.  Miles 9 and 10 were 9:38 and 9:19.  Total time was 1:39:31, with an average pace of 9:57.

My legs and knees are sore now, and I'm very salty!  I am going to keep the mileage constant around 30 miles for a couple of weeks, until my body feels more comfortable with the increased mileage.  Then I'll start following my brain training program to a T, which will have me up to around 60-mile weeks during peak training-whoa!  I really want to be back to the level where I was 2-3 years ago, when 8:00-9:00 was my normal, easy pace, even with relatively inconsistent training.  I'm not sure what has happened over these last few years.