Highlight of the Week: Feeling strong on my long runs / a heavy strength workout!
Monday | March 23, 2020: 30 min walk w/Steven
Tuesday | March 24, 2020: strength + 5 m run (incl 8×1:00)
Run location: VP Woods, Temp: 41°/41°, Time: 55:39, Pace: 11:08 avg, Difficulty: medium, Felt: decent!
Wednesday | March 25, 2020: 10 m run
Run location: Pine Dunes Lolli, Temp: 59°/58°, Time: 1:56:19, Pace: 11:38 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: great
Thursday | March 26, 2020: 2 m walk
Friday | March 27, 2020: 5 m run
Run location: VP Woods, Temp: 37°/38°, Time: 57:04, Pace: 11:24, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good!
Saturday | March 28, 2020: strength + 4 m run (incl hills x6)
Run location: hood, Temp: 42°/43°, Time: 44:14, Pace: 11:03 avg, Difficulty: mostly easy, Felt: strong but about to redline
Sunday | March 29, 2020: 14 m run
Run location: DPRT/Kilbourne Loop, Temp: 53°/45°, Time: 2:53:37, Pace: 12:24 avg, Difficulty: easy, Felt: good
Notes:
- I’ve become a much slower runner, due to running less, and gaining a lot of weight, so I decided to do some repeats this week to work on getting faster. I should probably work on eating less too…
- There are SO MANY people in the preserves I run in. I usually don’t see anyone, but on my Tuesday run I saw at least forty people, and I saw a lot of people in the preserve I ran to Wednesday as well. People must be itching to get out of the house because of COVID-19 (and nice weather), and the preserves seem like a safe place to go because they are so open (exposed to air). I’m grateful they are still open (for access) and that the park district is providing guidance on how to behave in the parks on social media. The district has closed all the bathrooms, and is not maintaining the preserves right now, so I hope people are still respectful of them and don’t litter or damage anything.
- I was planning to do my midweek long run before work Wednesday, but it’s darker and colder in the morning so I went after work and I am so glad I waited! It was windy, but so sunny and warm – it felt great to be running!
- I did a heavy strength workout on Saturday that made me really appreciate our home gym. Right after, I went outside for hill repeats and felt strong but like I was about to redline. Seeing another runner (so rare by home) pumped me up to finish strong. When she ran by she said “Good job! Are you doing hill repeats?” I told her yes and she said “brutal” (ha) then I told her to keep it up. I was hoping to see her again but I was almost done and didn’t.
- Even though the half I was going to do next month (it was not a goal race at all, I signed up to hang with friends) was made virtual, I stuck with the training. I added a midweek long run and made sure my long runs on the weekends were over 10 miles (which was the mistake I made in Atlanta training – doing too many ten milers and not much over that) so I’d have enough endurance. All that being said, I felt really strong on my fourteen miler today, and that was in the wind (25 mph with 35 mph gusts) and rain! So the training worked. My taper would have started now, but I will probably keep increasing the mileage over the month of April.
