FLM: Week 3

Merry Christmas Eve!

I’m going to go ahead and post my week 3 summary today and I’ll catch Sunday with next week’s summary. This week was a really solid week, training wise! I got in all 3 of my workouts. There are just 2 weeks left until race day! Woo hoo!

Monday: 2 mile warm up, 5 X 1 mile repeats, 2 mile cool down

I started off the week with a mile repeat workout. Before I start a workout, there is always a little bit of self-doubt that creeps in and makes me slightly apprehensive. Does this happen to you? The goal range for my repeats was 6:00 – 6:10 pace, which is definitely moving!

Armed with nothing but the Ragnar Tennessee playlist, I hit the TM and got to work. Monday has not typically been a workout day for me in the past, but I gotta say that I really enjoy starting the week off with a workout. You get those endorphins flowing and nip any potential procrastination in the bud.

As soon as I started the warm up portion of this workout, I felt AMAZING! I don’t ever recall starting a workout and feeling so completely fresh (hot and fresh out tha kitchen :)).

Mile 1: 6:11 (9.7 mph)
Mile 2: 6:11 (9.7 mph)
Mile 3: 6:07 (9.8 mph)
Mile 4: 6:03 (9.9 mph)
Mile 5: 6:00 (10.0 mph)

By the fourth and fifth repeats I wasn’t feeling quite as fresh, but I still felt good and the pace felt manageable. I had some awesome tunes to push me through those last few miles as well, so that totally helped. I had the playlist on random shuffle, so you never know what you are going to get at any given time. The last four songs were:

Queen: “We Are the Champions”
Cake: “The Distance”
Chicago: “You’re the Inspiration”
Will Smith: “Gettin’ Jiggy w/ It”

I will forever be indebted to Young Daniel for creating this killer playlist on Spotify for our relay. It has pulled me through many a workout since then.

Tuesday AM: 3 mile run, 45 minute strength training, 3 mile run

Tuesday morning I did a new thing! Rebecca, Jessica and I have all been talking about wanting to add strength training to our regular routine and we started this week! We ran to the gym, did 45 minutes of strength training with the trainer and ran home.

At the gym we did a circuit of upper and lower body exercises. We did 4 sets of 15 on each of the following:

• For upper body we did the chest fly machine, bicep curls with a barbell, tricep pushdowns, seated rows and shoulder presses with free weights.
• For lower body we did squats with the kettlebell, the leg press, leg extension and leg curl machines and seated calf raises.

It was a great way to incorporate the strength stuff because we still got our run in. Even though I had to wake up at 3:45 a.m., it was totally worth it! Ha.

Tuesday PM: RW Group Run

I hadn’t been to the store on Tuesday evening in (what seems like) quite some time. There aren’t any official training groups going on right now, so it was a smaller crew than normal, but we still had a good time.

Wednesday: 10 miles w/ Jessica & Rebecca (9:01 pace)

I’m so glad that my buddies are back running that I just don’t even know what to do with myself!

Thursday AM: 2 mile warm up, 5 mi. LT tempo (6:22 average), 2 mile cool down

Thursday morning was my second workout of the week. The workout was strategically placed two days after our first strength training session of the week. I didn’t even notice being sore at all on Wednesday, but when I woke up on Thursday morning, I was feeling the burn in my chest and shoulders. My legs weren’t sore at all though, so that worked well. I don’t want the strength training to interfere with my running at all, I just want it to enhance it. I’m sure that is easier said than done, but Rebecca made sure to let our trainer, Greg, know that we were only doing strength training to get faster, and not for any sort of vanity reasons (there are no bikini competitions in our futures … don’t you worry).

My Thursday morning workout was also fueled by the Ragnar TN playlist and it went pretty well. I did a two mile warm up, set the TM to 9.4 mph (6:22 pace) and just went with it. Before I started the workout, I had intentions of increasing the speed a little bit each mile, but after the first mile I decided to just stick with 6:22 (my goal pace range was 6:15 – 6:20). I tried to shift my focus to anything other than running (by praying, singing, thinking, etc.) to distract myself since I wasn’t adjusting the pace at all. I got through 4 miles and still felt good, so I did end up dropping the pace down ever so slightly to 6:18 for the 5th mile. After a two mile cool down, the workout was dunzo.

Thursday PM: 1 hour strength training

Rebecca and I met with Greg Thursday evening (Jessica got stuck at work :/). Y’all. He about killed us. We did 4 sets of 15 of 10 (or more) different exercises. I don’t even know if I could remember everything we did because it was so much, but I’ll try … We did tricep pushdowns and a tricep overhead press, two different types of bicep curls, shoulder presses, upright rows, lateral raises, front raises, kettlebell squats, donkey kicks, ab twists on a decline bench (for internal and external obliques) and ab leg raises. I think there may have been a little bit more too. Whew.

It was mostly upper body with a touch of core and legs. We joked that our arms might be too sore to drive home. It was a really good workout.

Friday: 6.5 miles (7:42 pace)

I was supposed to meet the girls to run Friday morning, but something happened with my alarm. Major bummer. I guess the silver lining was that I got some extra sleep. I was off work Friday, so I went out for a run by myself later in the morning. I did an out and back route and my mom came out and met me on my way back and we walked the rest of the route together. In actuality, we got a little sidetracked and ended up walking through town, doing some Christmas shopping and walking back home on the beach. It wasn’t exactly the simple out and back route that I had planned, but it was a lot of fun!

Saturday: 15 mile “moderate pace” LR (7:33 pace)

After missing my long run last weekend, I was hoping to redeem myself this week and I did! Rebecca met me at 5:30 to get an early start and we came back and met the rest of the guys at 6. I ran 8 miles with the guys and then turned off early so that I could make it to Running Wild for the Jingle Bell Run. There was an amazing turnout for the run! Everyone got a jingle bell for their shoe and we jingled around town. Truth be told, Rebecca, Jessica and I cut the route short. We had all run beforehand and we were just kind of over it.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas! Talk to you soon!