Hey friends! Here is what last week’s training looked like!
Monday – Easy: 7 miles (8:39 pace)
I actually got myself up and out the door to run before work on Monday this week! Finally. My motivation to run on Monday mornings seems to be directly correlated to the amount of rest (or lack thereof) that I get over the weekend. In years past, I did a pretty good job of catching up on rest on the weekends, but that hasn’t been the case as much over the last year. I’m not complaining about that by any means, but it is also very nice to wake up on Monday morning feeling ready to tackle the week.
Tuesday AM – Easy: 8 miles (8:43 pace) + PM – Easy: 5 miles (9:14 pace)
I did a “sailboat loop” on Tuesday morning. I’ve been a bit later getting out the door the last few weeks and traffic has usually picked up too much for it to make sense for me to even attempt this route, but not on Tuesday! The route actually works out nicely with the traffic flow. I’m usually running the same direction as the majority of the traffic is going, but since I am running against traffic, I don’t have to bail out onto the grass too often.
Tuesday evening, I did an easy double. I planned this run around a couple of errands that I needed to get done (“errands” primarily being picking up groceries and working around the available pickup slots). I got some drills and strides in after my run as well, in hopes that I would be ready to rock and roll for my workout the next day.
Wednesday – Quality: Hills!
Wednesday’s workout was a 3 mile warm up, 16 X 45 second hill repeats with 1:30 recovery and a 2 mile cool down. While I have several very nice, yet also hellacious hills on my driveway, it isn’t always practical to do hill repeats out there. Especially if it is dark! The road is mixture of sand, packed clay (or mud depending on the day), shells and rocks. I’ve tried doing hill repeats on the driveway before and I was too worried about breaking myself to be able to concentrate on the workout. All that is really just to say that I found a nice paved road in a proper neighborhood with some good hills and I did my workout there.
I got a question on Instagram about the ideal elevation grade for hill repeats. It is a good question and I think a good general rule of thumb is to find a hill that is about 5-6% grade. If you are outside, then obviously the terrain is varied and the percentage grade changes over the course of the hill itself as well. For example, the grade of the hill I ran varied from 3.5% to 10%, whereas the driveway hills vary from 6% to 15%. I’m pretty sure 15% is too steep to really be productive in the first place. I wrote a post several years ago about hill repeats. You can read that here.
Thursday – Easy: 6.5 miles (9:06 pace)
Thursday’s run was a bit weird and admittedly, it was self-induced weirdness. I ran a few miles after work before meeting with my form coach and then continued my run after we did 30 minutes of drills. When I type it up, it doesn’t actually sound as weird as it felt. I guess what made it seem weird was that I was in three different locations for each thing. Either which way, I got it done!
Friday – Easy: 6 miles (9:15 pace)
Friday morning, I did a few easy driveway miles while I listened to Emily Halnon describe her adventures across Oregon on the Ali on the Run podcast. My takeaway is that I have a lot of respect for ultra-runners, but have zero desire to be one myself.
Saturday – Easy: 12 miles (8:25 pace)
I was supposed to do a workout Saturday morning and a long run Sunday morning, but I pulled a little switcheroo and did it the other way. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel ready to tackle the workout on Saturday morning. I felt fine and was happy to run a longer than normal run, but I really just wanted to run easy and not fool with the workout.
I listened to Lindsey’s interview with Tianna Bartoletta. This was by far one of my favorite episodes. Sometimes I find the interviews with professional athletes to be unrelatable, but so much of what Tianna said made me say out loud, “Yes!” I love those moments when someone expresses something that is spot on with your own feelings. That happened multiple times throughout this interview for me, but mainly when she talked about her divorce.
Sunday – Quality: 2 mi. WU, 12 X 3 minutes at threshold, 2 mi. CD
I got a really good night’s sleep Saturday night and woke up ready to do the workout. This workout was likely meant to be done on the road, but I decided to do it at the track for simplicity’s sake. It’s nice not to have to figure out and route or deal with traffic and to be able to just get out there and run. The workout was a 2 mile warm up, 12 X 3 minutes at threshold pace with 1 minute walking recoveries and a 2 mile cool down.
My goal threshold pace was 5:50 and based on some quick calculations, my actual average pace was 5:45. Since the GPS isn’t totally accurate on the track, I think the pace was probably closer to 5:50. Regardless of what the “official” pace was, I’m happy with it. This was a LONG workout and I stayed engaged mentally and finished strong.
As a side note, I have really been struggling with my motivation more than usual. For whatever reason, I just can’t get excited about training right now like I usually can. While I think this is a totally normal feeling, I am trying to pay attention to it and reevaluate why I am feeling this way and what exactly I am trying to accomplish (you know … both in life in general and in running :)).
I know that my motivation will come back and when it does, if I have continued to work hard and be disciplined in my training, that everything will come together when the timing is right and all the stars will align. I’m starting to realize that it’s probably okay and healthy even to not be completely motivated all the time.
After reflecting on this a little bit, I have also realized that I seem to feel this exact same way every year around the middle to end of August. The accumulation of all of the hot summer miles and workouts adds up and really starts to really wear me down. With that being said, I am planning to get some blood-work done in the near future just to make sure that everything looks good from that perspective.
Total – 66.1 miles
That’s it for now. Have a great week!