A bit of a tricky week this was. I originally scheduled my workouts to include the Victoria Half Marathon on Sunday; then travel logistics got too complicated and I ended up staying home -- and rearranging my workouts again. For the second week in a row, I didn't complete everything I set out to do, but I did work hard overall and had a great reason (see below) for what I missed.
Monday, 10/5:
60 minutes on the stairclimber in zone 1 (125 bpm)
Tuesday, 10/6:
Full-body weights
4 mile run on the treadmill
Super speedy treadmill running for me! I finished 4 miles in under 42 minutes, just over 10:30 minute miles. Even better, I stayed in my fat-burning zone the whole time, which tops out at 156 bpm. I really do need to look into why treadmill running is so much easier. Is it simply because it's completely flat (to me, it even feels slightly downhill)?
Wednesday, 10/7:
Intervals on the track
A first for me, and such a hard workout. I met SuperAthlete J, along with two people from her tri-athlete group, at my daughters' school to run intervals on the track. We warmed up with several laps -- each one is about 1/6th of a mile -- then got busy with the sprints: one lap around as fast as we could sustain the whole way; then a jogging lap to recover. We did 8 sets of those for a total of just under three miles, then another four or so jogging laps to cool down.
Running intervals felt completely different from doing them on the stairclimber and my heart rate totally showed it: I went as high as 175 bpm on my first couple go-rounds. By the last few, I was so tired that I couldn't move fast enough to get my heart rate up into that range, but I was still getting to 170 or so. It's a whole different way of exercising and, as hard as it was, I really enjoyed it. SAJ and her crew are planning to meet up every Wednesday evening and I'm going to start joining them. Although these intervals aren't as lengthy as the ones I've been doing on the stairclimber, I think they'll benefit my running more.
Thursday, 10/8:
15 mile run
I felt especially good about this one -- probably even better than I felt about the 16 from the previous week -- because it was my third day in a row of running and took place just 14 hours after the intervals from the night before. The fact that I could pull off 15 miles on my third consecutive day of running gave me a good confidence boost.
With that said, it was a real slog. I hadn't planned to run 15 miles on Thursday; as I said above, I was scheduled to do my long run for the week at the Victoria Half Marathon on Sunday. (My thought was that I'd tack on two miles at the end to get to 15 miles). Then all my plans changed. Getting back and forth to Victoria was going to take so much time and cost so much money that it didn't seem worth it -- especially when I considered that I could be enjoying a luxurious couples weekend at home with my husband if I didn't go. (Our girls were spending the weekend with their grandma regardless.) So I decided to stay in Seattle, which meant I'd need to run the week's 15 on my own.
SAJ and I had already agreed to run the week's 8 together on Thursday. When I saw her at school that morning, she said, "You know, if you have the energy, you should just do your 15 today -- then you'll have it over with and you'll have company for the first 8." As tired as my legs were and as unappealing as a 15-mile run sounded, I immediately felt the wisdom in the suggestion. After all, it was a beautiful day, perfect conditions, and I knew I'd be so happy to have the week's long run behind me. I went home and got ready for the run as if I was going to do the whole 15, and promised myself that I wouldn't decide whether or not to go for it until I'd wrapped up the 8 with SAJ.
Even the first 8 were pretty challenging. My heart rate kept spiking and I felt hugely tired. SAJ did most of the talking and I was so grateful. I literally thought of her as a lifeline that I could cling to as I stumbled my way through our run. Our 8 wrapped up at her house; after a brief pit stop, I decided I could continue on my own. I was totally "in the zone" for the first 3 miles or so, then started having trouble when the route got hilly. I won't lie: I did a good amount of walking when the hills got steep. But I did finish the 15 miles and got to enjoy a much more relaxed weekend because of it.
Friday, 10/9
Rest
This truly was a rest day -- I spent most of it in the car, driving my daughters to meet their grandma in Kelso. Since I've been having trouble actually resting on rest day, this enforced inactivity was probably a great thing.
Saturday, 10/10
8 mile run
10 mile bike ride
On this day, I did the 8 that I was going to do with SAJ on Thursday -- and I got to enjoy the very fine company of Sister A for several miles of it. Wonderful! The weather was perfect and I was reminded all over again of how much I love running with Sister A: we really are ideal running partners. I so hope that she decides to train for a distance event again sometime ... I would jump right in just to have the chance to run regularly with her. I ended my 8 miles feeling totally invigorated and strong. It was a wonderful treat to really enjoy a run when so many of them lately have been hard.
Later that day, I rode my bike alongside Speedy Sister K while she ran 10 miles. She was originally supposed to come with me to do the Victoria Half, but lost her transportation when I decided to stay home. So I thought the least I could do was keep her company on a long run. She's so much faster than me, though, that I knew we could never run together. Riding my bike with her was a great compromise and another easy workout for my legs. Yay!
Sunday, 10/11
Rest
That's right, another rest day. I wasn't supposed to have one -- I should have done full body weights and 45 minutes in zone 1 or 2. But I had a whole wonderful weekend of my husband all to myself and I didn't want to miss a minute of it. When his Sunday band practice got cancelled at the last minute, I took it as a sign that I was supposed to skip my workout for the day. So we saw two movies and split a burger for lunch in between. That's the kind of thing that, in my mind, completely justifies the occasional missed workout.
But, because I love to lay the guilt trips on myself, I feel compelled to list the stuff I didn't get to this week:
• the abs portion of the one full-body weight workout I managed to do (ran out of time at the gym and forgot to do it when I got home);
• my second full-body weight workout for the week, along with the 45 minutes of cardio I would have done afterward;
• my upper-body weight workout for the week -- for the second time in a row!
I'm trying to tell myself that I'm more than making up for anything I miss with the ever-increasing amounts of time I'm spending on running ... so far, I'm not totally buying it.
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