Weekly Review & a long run

I'm a little behind on last week review.

It wasn't my best week but still managed 24 miles and a good long run

Monday - Rest

Tuesday - Rest

Wednesday - 5 mile run

Thursday - 1 mile run & Strength - Shoulders & Abs

Friday - 6 mile run

Saturday - 12 mile run

 Sunday - Rest

The thing about not following a training plan is I run which ever days I feel like it and usually just plan how many miles I want to run that day. Apparently I was a little more tired the first part of the week so sleeping in felt nice. Most of my workouts during the week have all been in the morning starting at around 6:30 am. It still isn't easy to wake up this early but I have noticed that once the alarm goes off once it takes me a while to try and fall back asleep so it's just better to get up and head to the gym. Because I have limited time in the mornings I didn't get another day of strength in either.

I'm still pretty happy with the 24 miles even if it isn't the 30 miles I put as my weekly goal. Maybe this was a "recovery" week :)
 Overall I'm just happy to be consistently running, building my base, and hitting my long runs.

Speaking of long runs I was really pleased with my 12 miler this past Saturday. My friend Tim posted on my Facebook about meeting up for a run. And I'm all for running with other people! The majority of my runs are always alone so it's nice to have someone to chat to help the miles go by faster.

I took my hand held filled with nuun and my awesome Gu chomps I got for xmas from this BRF with awesome little messages.

I also took my new Brooks Vapor Gloves that I won in a contest in December but had just received in the mail. Sadly they are too big :( They are a small and I should have got an extra small. There was just too much space at the tips of the fingers that kept bothering me.

I didn't take any pictures with Tim but he's made an appearance a few times on here at other races we have been at.

He is pretty speedy and usually places at most of the races so I was nervous I would slow him down. He is more a short distance runner, he is aiming for a sub 19 min 5k this spring, I think his current PR is 19:30 or somewhere around there. But he wants to run his first marathon this year so is trying to build up his long runs again. I know he was just running a pace that was comfortable for me. We were averaging about 9:30 pace for the first 5 miles then progressively were picking up the pace and averaged 9:16 pace for the next 5 miles. The last two miles he said he was going to test his speed so was going to run ahead. I said ok and my goal was just to keep him in my sights. Figured it was good training to pick up the pace on tired legs. He got out of my sight for a little bit on a turn but I ended up running the last two miles in 8:36 & 8:38. I definitely have some work to do in the speed department but I'm not stressing over it.

Plenty of time to improve and marathon training starts in exactly 2 weeks from today so there will be more purpose to the runs I do each week which will help with my speed and endurance.

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Thanks so much for everyone input on my long run days from my last post. I think I will go ahead and keep them on Sunday. If I need to juggle them as the training progresses I will do that.

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I managed to run 75.22 miles for the month of January. Pretty good considering my December mileage was 44 miles.

I think I'm ready to start marathon training. I'm pretty nervous cause this schedule is more demanding. But I think it will help me with some future races. I will post my plan in a few days!

 

 

Was January a good month for you?

 

Are you training or will you be training for a race soon?

10 miles that turned into 12

Thank you everyone so much for the birthday wishes!

I had a fabulous day that included lunch at Jimmy John's with some of my coworkers...

The boss, Gene, me, Katie (across from me) and Rylie

Jimmy John's has the best bread ever. We tried to get a free loaf of bread for my birthday but they said they didn't do that :(

It actually was snowy out and took some time to get there but it was one of the last times we will all be together since Katie is leaving us and moving to the city where the young retire... Portland. (Reference to Portlandia.. do you watch that show? It's stupid but in a funny way)

I'm sad she is leaving cause she made work fun. We would joke around, quote movies and songs all day long. I might have to make a trip to visit her sometime this year. Her and her mom actually just signed up to run the Portland Half Marathon in October. It will be their first half! I'm so excited for her and glad she could come to me for advice on training plans, sports bras (I recommended Moving Comfort they are my fav!) and running shoes.

Anyway you can obviously see I'll miss her. Good thing we text each other random crap about once a day to make each other laugh. So back to my birthday...

All I really wanted on my birthday was to keep warm and snuggle up to my boys so that's what we did! Much better than being outside in the cold and driving around on a stormy day.

Keeping warm when I did venture outdoors. I heart my Brooks Run Happy beanie I won at the Las Vegas RnR expo

Snuggling with my boys (minus Gene he was taking the picture :)

Gene made us a fabulous spaghetti dinner! And after we had some yummy birthday treats...

Is it a brownie or is it a cookie??

Brownie mix with cookie dough on top

It's both!

So do you think it's called a brookie? or a coownie?  

And yesterday Gene bought me this bad boy...

I had my sliver with some milk not the beer in this picture haha.

This cake is huge!! You might have seen it at Costco. All I could handle was a small sliver it's very rich but oh soooo good! I gave a huge slice to my brother and our friend so they could take some home. I will probably do the same for my coworkers.

After all the desserts I was definitely wanting to go out and run off some of those extra calories I consumed all week.

So today I set out for a 10 mile run that turned into a 12 mile run. Yay me!

The day was actually pretty. Which means it wasn't snowing or raining, a change from the last few days. It was a little bit cold but the crisp air felt good. I set out on an out and back course. I had no specific pace in mind just wanted to keep it at a relaxed easy pace. At about mile 5 I was feeling good so decided to go out one more mile. The first 6 miles were without music. I just enjoyed the sounds around me and the scenery.

Icy lake and finally some snow on the mountains in the background.

 At the turn around I turned on Pandora and was enjoying the sun breaking through the clouds for a few minutes. There was a headwind that was making me cold but yet I was sweaty and hot all the same time which made for a gross feeling.

I thought the wind was slowing me down but looking at my Garmin stats after the run I was actually progressively increasing my speed ending with mile 12 with an 8:49 pace. I was pretty happy about that since lately during my long runs my last few miles were slower than the first and I never felt the extra energy kick in to make me want to speed up. Today I did. 

12 miles in 1:53 for an overall pace of 9:28

My week looked like this...

Monday - 8 mile run

Tuesday - 1.2 mile warm up & Strength- Chest & Triceps

Wednesday - Birthday! 2.5 mile run with one mile at at 7:53 pace to see if I had some sub 8's left in me. Strength - Shoulder, Abs & push ups

Thursday - Cross train- 35 minutes on the spin bike followed my stretching and foam rolling

Friday - rest day

Saturday - rest day

Sunday - 12 mile run and .3 mile cooldown walk

Total running mileage - 24 miles.

I just missed my goal of at least 25 miles. I should have ran Friday or Saturday or ran a little longer one of the other days.

I also wanted an extra day of strength but I'm happy with at least 2.

This coming week I hope to have my mileage at about 30 miles and 2-3 days of strength.

How did your training go this week?

Have you ever had a Costco cake?

They are HUGE but delicious! I love their pumkin pie's too.