After week 8, my body was exhausted. Thankfully for me, Hal sets his program up in such a way that week 9 was a lighter week. My hamstring was still sore so I decided to really keep it easy. I also mixed up the called for plan for the week, so it wasn't really according to Hal's plan. I went more on how my body was feeling. Here are some pictures from this week. Monday: We were out of town Monday at an amusement park. It was so much fun and we did a ton of walking. So, active rest day! Checkout this awesome coaster. It was seriously so scary, but so much fun. 100% recommend going on it if you ever have the chance. Tuesday: I was still quite sore from week 8 but from past experience I knew the type of soreness I was having would be able to be shaken off the soreness by doing slow runs. I had only planned to do 3 miles, but I could really feel the kinks getting worked off so I went a little further.
Wednesday: After Tuesday's run, I decided to switch things up and do some 5ish milers at a slower pace. I was feeling like my body was finally recovering but wanted to go a little further than 3 miles to keep working things out. This run was solely based on how I felt. Surprisingly, I ended up with negative splits on the last 4 miles. My final mile was 9:58. My body felt really great and I didn't feel like I was pushing myself at all. Overall, great run! Thursday: My body felt great for this run, so I decided to stick with about 5 miles. Temperature was great. Nothing to complain about today! Friday: I had a wedding to attend Friday night (Friday night weddings are my FAVORITE!). I knew I wanted to get a run in but hadn't really decided on length. I've been toying with the idea of wearing a cheerleading bow in my hair for the half, so I wanted to start wearing if during my training to see if it would be annoying to run with. Besides that, Friday's run was just based on feel. I ended up doing a little over 4 miles. Friday night was filled with celebrating love and lots of dancing. Wedding Style Details: My dress was from Rent the Runway (Get $30 off your first rental: https://rtr.app.link/e/aQa6l4d3YF (disclosure: I'll also receive a $30 credit when you use that link)) by the designer Parker. I've worn several of dresses by Parker over the years and I've loved them all. This one was no exception. It was comfortable, easy to dance in and the ruffled of the shoulder sleeve added a fun twist to the little black dress. Shoes are Badgley Mischka. They are actually the shoes I wore for my wedding. I've found other options here and here. Saturday: Planned rest day! After drinks, dancing and celebrating, I knew I'd want to use Saturday as a rest day. Sunday: My hamstring is still tight. It feels like it make have gotten worse. My guess is that all that dancing irritated it. I decided to use Sunday as a rest day. I need to be fresh for peek week! 18 miles for the week. BRING ON WEEK 10 aka peak week, baby!! xoxo, Wilk
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Goal for the week - HIT EVERY RUN. Monday: Easy three miles. Nothing too exciting to report about this run, other than I got to take my new sneakers out for a spin. Felt really good and I'm excited about getting them fully broken in. Tuesday: Which has recently become my "Track Tuesday". I brought my workout gear to work, changed and headed right to the track. Workout: 1 mile warm up, 3 x 1600 at race pace. 1 mile cool down. My approach to this was to enter the interval mode of my TomTom. The watch doesn't go to hundredths in interval mode, so I had to do either .2 or .3 for my recoveries. I settled on .3. Humidity was 94%. I had already decided that I'd be okay with having a run that was less than my goal pace. I set out trying to focus on breathing, longer strides and keeping my cadence up. Mile splits were: 8:54, 8:52 and 8:44. Holy cow! Did I really just do that and feel as good as I felt? (please note: any comparison I do within my training runs is only to myself and what I've done in the past. I understand that those are "easy" pace for a lot of people). This run really gave me the confidence that maybe under 2 hours is actually attainable. I also love how my TomTom showed the information from my intervals in it's own area so I was able to see exactly what my splits were for the workout. The summary tab just shows the splits for each mile. Wednesday: This was my husband's (I'm tired of calling him my hubby or husband so he'll be referred to as R from here on out) R's first day of summer break part 2 was this morning. He told me there was "no way I was going to wake up because he wasn't waking up". Normally, R is up over an hour before me and I still can't get myself out of bed. When he said that, I was like "oh yeah, you watch me". I dragged myself out of bed just to prove to him that I could do it. It wasn't until mid-run that I had realized, he'd used reverse psychology on me!!! He knew telling me I wouldn't do something, would actually push me so I would get it done. 1 point R. I couldn't help but laugh. Thanks R! This run was only completed because of you helping me get up and at it in the morning. I got my 3 miles in the AM done. They weren't fun and they weren't fast. Legs were trashed. I'm so brilliant, that I decided I need to fit another run in on Wednesday, on already dead legs. So smart. *insert totally sarcastic eye roll at my self here*. For this run, it was a 50 minute temp run. Hal says "A Tempo Run can be as hard or easy as you want to make it, and it has nothing to do with how long (in time) you run or how far. In fact, the times prescribed for Tempo Runs serve mainly as rough guidelines. Feel free to improvise. Improvisation is the heart of doing a Tempo Run correctly." (http://www.halhigdon.com/training/51133/Half-Marathon-Advanced-Training-Program). Knowing my legs were dead, I decided to take Hal's advice to improvise and make it as hard (or as easy) as I wanted. I decided on a 20 minute warm-up, 20 minutes pushing harder than an easy pace but not pushing so hard that I could potentially hurt myself and a 10 minute cool down. I did NOT feel like running. But, I put on my headphones, got a podcast going and went along on my way. My paces were faster than I had expected for being as tired as I was. My left hammy still feels a little off, but I'm thinking it is just build up lactic acid. I made sure to stretch and foam roll after. Thursday: Long run day. This week was 1:45, all at a slow pace. I'd heard about Generation UCan Super Starch drink from my local running store. The first time I'd heard about it was the day before the Broad Street run, so it wasn't some I wanted to try for the first time on race day. I finally picked some up before this run. I had the pomegranate blueberry flavor. Mixed it with 12 oz of water in my blender bottle (I mixed it really well, I'd been warned that it's thick). First, it was tasty! Yum! I also noticed myself start to feel more focused. It was an entirely different feeling that caffeine, it's hard to exactly put it into words. I felt my mood boost too. I took my hydration pack with me just in case I needed it and off I went. I would have been fine without my hydration pack. I also brought energy jelly beans, which I ate (but only because I was bored and they tasted good). I will 100% continue to buy more of this stuff to use for my long runs. I want to get a tub of it so I can experiment with making shakes for breakfast with it. But I digress! So, on my run I listened to two of my favorite podcasts and got into a groove. I tweaked my knee on my second run on Tuesday, which I felt during the run (and the next day). It isn't anything major, more of just a nagging thing. Stretching, rest, and some BCAA should take care of it. I was so happy to get this run done. While week 8 isn't my peak week, it was a high mileage week for me and it was a nice feeling to know I had on run left. Friday: REST DAY. When my body yells at me to rest, I listen! Hydration, stretching and BCAAs are the only things that happened Friday. Saturday: Plan was 1 mile warm up, 5 miles at pace and 1 mile cool down. Saturday was hot. I thought I started off okay but quickly into the 5 mile portion I was in a bad mental place. I stopped running, caught my breath and re-grouped. I felt like I'd gotten myself into a better mindset, but I didn't. This run was a total disaster. I felt like I had to choose between trying to hit my pace or finishing the run. I chose to slow down and do 5 miles at the warm up/cool down pace. I finished the run frustrated and hot. Definitely not how I wanted to close out week 8. Week 8 runs completed: 6/6 *GOAL HIT*.
Week 9 is a much easier week. It has 4-5 runs depending on if I choose to do an extra rest day or not. Based on how I'm feeling now, I may take the extra rest but I won't know for sure until this week kicks off. 4 WEEKS LEFT.
My Week 7 is composed of 6 runs: 3 mile, 4 x 800, 3 mile, 45 minute tempo, 4 mile race pace and 1 hour 45 minutes 3/1. Runs completed during week 7: 5/6.
I knew I wouldn't be able to follow the plan exactly this week because I'll be visiting the shore so I changed things up. Monday: 3 rainy miles. It actually felt really nice to run in the rain. A nice change up from the brutal heat. I've been really focusing on stretching and foam rolling after my runs. I really neglected this and I think that is why I was hurting last week. Tuesday: Track Tuesday! My first ever. I feel like a big girl *said in funny voice*. I was really proud of this run. When I did the 400 repeats, I stopped completely after each one to recover. For the 800s, I did a recovery lap. So for the entire workout, I was actually running. I took one quick swig of water 1/2 way through but that was it. I did 1+ mile warm-up. Once I came around the track to the area labeled 800, I started my first repeat. I kept myself in lanes 3-5 (when people were in my lane, I'd move closer to the center or away from the center depending on my speed compared to theirs). I'm not sure if that added any meaningful distance, but I'd rather be doing a little bit extra than cheating myself. My fastest 800 was the third - 800m in 3:35. Side Note - I love SmashRun.com. It allows you to select portions of your run so you can break down your pace. It also gives you a ton of insights into your running data. I highly recommend! I've included my graph below from Tuesday's track workout. You can clearly see the 4 repeats. Repeat #3 was the fastest, followed by #4.
Wednesday: Long run of the week. So, as you may already know, I run but I'm not an advanced runner or anything like that so I'm still fumbling my way through this all trying to get better. So, I'm an idiot for doing this the day after speed work. More experienced runners probably already knew not to do their long run after speed work, but I didn't. I learned the hard way! When I first started, my legs were DEAD ? I thought to myself, "okay. I'll just do the full time easy pace and do the 3:1 next week". After a mile or two, I got into a groove and decided I wanted to do 3:1. I didn't have a gu, so I had to improvise and brought Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. It was fun to be surprised with what flavor I picked each time. I really liked when I got the pear flavor and the apple flavor. Both were light and refreshing. Not so much the chocolate, too heavy tasting. The cinnamon was flat out gross while running. Overall, I ate too many. I ate some before I ran and I ate a bunch while I was running. Too much sugar (I was still on a sugar high at like 10PM). Overall, they did what they were supposed to do! I felt re-energized each time I'd have a few. I probably won't use those for the 1/2 but anytime I get into a pinch, I certainly would.
So, I'm running and running. I tried not to concentrate on pace for the first 3/4 of the run and really focus on quick feet and how I felt overall. Following Hal's plan, the last 1/4 mile of the run needed to be progressing. Mile 8 and 9 were negative splits. Last two miles were in the 9's. Overall, 10:31 average pace. I made sure to really stretch well and foam roll after. All this foam rolling is turning me into a cheetah. See what I mean?
Thursday: Slow 3 miles. Goal was to keep my heart rate low, shake out my legs and just enjoy the run. Average heart rate was 152. A little higher than I would have liked for a run like this, so next time I'll be working on that.
Friday: We headed down to Wildwood, so no run today! I included a couple of pictures from the weekend below. Saturday: Rainy tempo run. It was raining so hard, I really loved it. It was such a nice change from the heat and humidity. I also LOVE running on the boardwalk. I wish I could run on them every day. It feels like so much less impact and there is so much to look at on the boardwalk that time flies. Sunday: I was supposed to do 4 miles at race pace. With warm up and cool down, it would have been about 6 miles but after driving home over 2 hours and walking a ton this weekend, I was exhausted and took a rest day. Kinda irritated with myself because I was so close to getting all my runs in. Missing runs like this will definitely come back to haunt me if I miss my goal for the half marathon. Week 8 has officially begun! We'll be traveling again this weekend, so I've got my schedule made up to make sure I fit in all of my runs. Tuesday will be a double workout to fit everything. I'll be sure to make a full post about how week 8 goes. XOXO, Wilk I've gotten some questions about what training program I'm doing and for a recap of how it is going. For this half, I'm currently following Hal Higdon's advanced plan. Previous halfs I did GIPIS and Nike+. I've heard so many great things about Hal's plan, I decided to give it a go.
My goal for this year was to keep improving, so after Broad Street, I was pretty diligent about keeping up my running. I was averaging about 20 miles per week. The description of the plan says, " You should be capable of running 30 to 60 minutes a day, five to seven days a week and have a basic understanding of how to do speed work". While I'd never classify myself as an advanced runner, I felt that fit me and would be doable. Two things really excited me about this plan: 1. hill work & 2: track work. None of my other plans have ever included either. Yes, I've done longer intervals, shorter, fartlek and strides but never a hills or track workouts. I also liked that the plan had a lot of 3 mile days. That makes it so much easier to get out on days when I'm not feeling motivated because I can justify it by saying "it's only 3 miles". Side note - this also blows my mind. When I started running, 3 miles was a long run & I remember when running 5 miles was a long run. I would drive out to the Great Swamp to do 5 milers because it was so long. Now, I'm not discrediting anyone who thinks these are long. I'm just saying since I've been running, my mindset has changed. I think it's important to look back and acknowledge that every now and again. I digress. Here's a little recap (I'm so sorry some weeks are light with details. I'll be sure to make more regular posts with more information going forward). My program began June 18th - I chose to do this because I was away for vacation the week of the 25th. I was *hoping* to run, but I didn't want to add unnecessary stress on the training program, so I left the week free. Week 1: I did the three mile combined with the hills (STUPID). I was only able to do 3 of the 6 hills that I was supposed to get done. Pretty frustrating because I thought I'd enjoy hills. I did my tempo run outside and hated it. I did all three 3 mile runs.
Going forward, I'll make more detailed posts about the week and how I felt. If there is anything else you guys wanna know, please let me know! xoxo, Wilk |
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