Happy Memorial Day!
Here is what my training looked like the week of 05.21.18 – 05.27.18:
Monday – Easy: 5 miles (8:26 pace)
I started the week off with an easy loop after work Monday evening.
Tuesday AM – Quality: 10 miles (8:04 pace) + PM – Easy: 5 miles (8:21 pace)
My workout Tuesday was a 3 mile warm up, 3 X 800, 3 X 600, 3 X 400 and a 2 mile cool down. We (the Daniels and I) hit the track early Tuesday morning. We are getting to the time of year where you have to pick your poison with the workouts. Do you go in the morning and suffer in the humidity or do you go in the afternoon and suffer in the heat? I am apt to choose a morning workout over an evening workout regardless of conditions, so the choice isn’t really that difficult for me. Morning > evening (almost) every time.
The workout itself went pretty well. The warm up was longer than usual, but I never mind that. It takes me a little bit longer to get warmed up in the mornings anyway, so that actually worked out great. My splits for the 800s were 3:01, 2:59, 3:00 (6:00 average pace), for the 600s were 2:13, 2:15, 2:14 (5:51 average pace) and for the 400s were 1:25, 1:24, 1:23 (5:36 average pace). The Daniels did 5 X 1200, so I didn’t run with them, but it was nice to have them out there.
Wednesday – Easy: 5 miles (8:24 pace)
Wednesday was another easy loop after work. For whatever reason, I had a really hard time getting myself out of bed in the morning this week. I think part of that is due to the general fatigue that comes from getting acclimated to the heat. I’ve been feeling more worn down in the last few weeks than usual.
Thursday – OFF
In the spirit of resting when I feel like I need to, I decided to take a day off Thursday. I got dressed to run, laid down on the floor for some snuggles and didn’t get back up. Ha.
Friday AM – Easy: 10 miles (8:46 pace) + PM – Easy: 5 miles (8:52 pace)
Friday morning I felt so much better! I did a loop with the Daniels and another loop by myself. I listed to the Ali on the Run Show interview with Sarah Clancy of Sarah Marie Design Studio. I loved hearing about all of the behind the scenes things that go into running her business.
Saturday – Easy: 10.25 miles (8:06 pace)
Saturday morning was a pretty standard group run. It sprinkled on us a little bit in the first few miles, which actually felt quite nice. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem to be nearly as humid as it has been the past few weeks. We also got to see a beautiful rainbow that looked like it ended less than 100 yards from the road we were running on. After the run, we did the typical coffee + breakfast + conversation thing at Warehouse.
Sunday – RACE: 10.75 miles (8:11 pace)
Total – 61 miles
That’s it for now! Have a great week!
On Tuesday you ran 10 miles and called it “quality” at 9:11 pace. But then at the end of the week on Saturday you ran 10 miles and called it “easy” at 8:06 pace. LOL What is your definition of easy? Not trying to sound like I’m attacking, please don’t take it that way! Just genuinely curious. Wondering if you did that because it was harder to run in the humidity, so pace was slower but effort was more. And then 8:06 was easy because there wasn’t as much humidity so the effort wasn’t as much. Am I guessing right?
Hey! So, yeah, that definitely would’ve been very confusing. I called Tuesday’s run “quality” because it was an actual track workout. I label all speed and tempo sessions as quality. However, my average pace for that run wasn’t correct. Actually several of them were off, so I’m glad you questioned that. I went back to Garmin Connect to double check them. According to the VDOT calculator, my easy pace is anything over 7:45 pace. I generally hover somewhere in the 8:30 to 9:00 range in the summer for my easy pace though. Hopefully that makes sense!
“Easy” pace should really be effort based anyway, but I was just giving you my typical range. You are absolutely correct that the humidity can make a huge difference too though!