Training recap – August 6-11

(Heh… yeah, notice how I skipped a couple weeks there? Vacation – gotta love it!  We went to Washington, DC, where the overnight low temperatures were higher than our average July high temp back here, and the weather for the week was somewhere between sweltering and Hades.  Absolutely no running was attempted, but with no car we figured our walking at about a 3-4 mile per day average.)

After taking a two week break for vacation (!!!), I was a little worried about picking the running back up this week.  I don’t have enough of a habit of running yet; the idea of once again restarting is a daunting one to me and provokes substantial anxiety.  Of course, it’s mixed in with the other anxieties of how-many-unread-emails-will-I-find-tomorrow-at-work and how-many-unpleasant-surprises-are-going-to-be-in-those-emails and what-did-I-forget-to-do-before-I-left-that’s-gonna-haunt-me-tomorrow… gee, think I’m anxious much?  This, friends, is why I run.

The plan was:  Just get running. Anything. Any distance, any pace. Just get moving.

The reality:

Monday – 1.53 miles, 17 minutes
The day was, as expected for a first-day-back, crazy insane.  (For the record: 284 unread emails.) Only had time for a fast ten-minute clear-the-brain walk before a series of afternoon meetings, but it was enough to get to late afternoon without a brain breakdown.

So, the run was after work, about 6:00 pm.  I parked down at the lake and started off on the path.  My legs felt like stone pillars – no flex, no bounce – but I figured I’d loosen up pretty quick.  A quarter mile in, it still felt like that.  “Seriously, did I forget how to do this?”  Yes, I said that OUT LOUD and earned a couple stares from my pathmates.  Got to a mile, kept moving to about 1.25 miles, then stopped.  Walked the rest of the way back to the car, went home, and sat on the deck with my husband and a glass of wine.

Remember all that anxiety?  Yeah, gone now.  The “bad run” is done, now it’s time to move on.

Wednesday –2.40 miles, 30 minutes (approximate)

Soozan arranges weekly workouts for her office, and sweetly includes me in the invites even though I left that office several years ago.  Today’s adventure was ambling about a local wooded park.  Not only did I get to see colleagues I haven’t seen in quite a while, Sooz and I just jogged around the trails, getting totally twisted around.  My Garmin died ten minutes in – oh well! – but we were just chatting away and catching up on our summer so far.  The run felt easy, even on rolling trails, and my legs felt completely fresh.

Thursday – 4.27 miles, 41:40

So my biggest challenge when running alone has been in initial pacing – I am finding that I run WAAAY too fast in the first mile, then suck through the second mile before I start to get my wind back.  Now, when I’m just running 3-5 miles, this can be recovered – but what about when I want to do tempo miles mid-run?  Yeah, this needs work.

Today I started out consciously pacing slow.  I found myself sprinting a bit up a bridge, but caught it and slowed back down. But I tried not to actually look at the watch until I was close to the first mile mark. Success!  Splits: 10:00, 9:44, 10:09 (hill section), 9:19, and then an 8:58 pace on the last quarter mile.  The run felt good, didn’t walk ONCE outside the two water breaks.  (Though, I will admit, I stop at my friend’s store at the 3-mile mark for a cup of water and tend to stay a few (say, ten) minutes.)

Saturday – 3.20 miles, 36:34

I was sooooo glad to see the Math Teacher at 6:30 this morning!  I’ve missed our early-Saturday runs, and it was wonderful to squeeze one in this morning.  We both had early commitments, so we kept it short – though I did goad her into running ALL THE WAY to the Starbucks entrance rather than stopping when my watch chirped our third mile split.

Sunday – 7.05 miles, 1:13:37

I got nervous about not having anything longer than five miles so far, with the half-marathon coming up in 35 days… (oh, wow…)  So Saturday night I mapped out a seven-mile run that tread along my familiar paths.  I stayed up WAY too late last night, but my darling husband kept me on track this morning to get up and out the door (thank you, love!).  There was a group doing a twelve-hour run at the lake today, and I fell in with them for a couple laps – they were about an hour into their day when I joined up, and still feeling fairly good about it.  Made my plan for seven miles seem a bit puny, but I just kept my mouth shut.  After a couple laps, it was south to the Brewery, then back toward the Capitol.  I was able to keep an easy pace throughout – still a little fast in the beginning, but recovered okay and finished with a nine-minute mile.  It felt REALLY good to break through that mental five-mile barrier!

Planned for this week:

I’ve sort of abandoned slavishly following the running plans I was referencing, but I think this week I’ll get in four runs – two 3-milers, a 5-miler mid-week, and next weekend add an extra loop to the route I did today for about 8.5 miles.  The weather is supposed to be quite warm this week, so it might be a matter of what’s doable when I finally get out the door.