Hey friends!
Here is what training looked like the week of 06.01.21 – 06.06.21:
Monday – Easy: 8.0 miles (8:13 pace)
We woke up to wonderful temps in the low-sixties on Memorial Day! It felt so good out. It was also so nice not to have to rush out of the door super early like I do on a regular work day. After lounging a bit and leisurely drinking my morning coffee, I did an easy 8 mile run from the house. We had plans to go out on the boat with my mom and dad mid-morning. I ended up water skiing 3 miles while we were out on the bay. Hopefully this will be the first of many ski sessions of the season!
I wasn’t oddly energized when we got back home mid-afternoon and I even ended up doing about 30-45 minutes of Pilates + random strength/stretching type stuff. Not gonna lie, I surprised myself by skipping a nap and getting that in!
Tuesday – Quality: 2 mi. WU, 4 mi. tempo (6:14 pace), 2 mi. CD
After over a month of zero quality sessions, I decided to dust myself off and give it a go on Tuesday morning. This was a bit of a spontaneous decision for sure! I went back and forth between doing a 5k time trial and doing a 4 mile tempo. The goal of both would be to get in a solid effort and give myself a better gauge of my current fitness level. The thought of a time trial was NOT appealing (special shout out to Spring of 2020 for that!), so I ultimately settled on the tempo effort. I made it a progressive tempo and was able to do 6:33, 6:16, 6:13 and 5:58. After an entire month of no “fast” running, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I’ve gotten some solid base building in during the last month or so and it seems like my fitness level stayed a bit higher than I expected.
Wednesday AM – Easy: 7.65 miles (8:46 pace) + PM – Strength
Wednesday was Global Running Day! I celebrated by running some miles with one of my very best running buddies, Rebecca. We haven’t gotten a chance to run together in quite some time (life is hard sometimes), so this was a treat. We’ve run thousands upon thousands of miles together over the last decade!
Wednesday evening I went to the gym and did some strength work. I started with a 300 meter row, did 30 minutes of strength work with Gabbi and ended it with 15 minutes on the elliptical.
Thursday – Moderate: 4.1 miles (7:04 pace) + Strength
I woke up to rain Thursday morning and decided to take advantage of a nice opportunity to sleep in a bit. I had a short window of time after work to run before going to the gym for a 45 minute group strength training class. I made the most of the 30 minutes that I did have and ran a bit quicker than normal. The group class was a lot of fun! We did 3 rounds of 8 different exercises with shrinking duration and shrinking rest. For example, the first time through we did each exercise for one minute w/ 30 seconds in between, the second time through we did each exercise for 40 seconds w/ 20 seconds in between and the last time around we did each exercise for 20 seconds w/ 10 seconds in between. It was a great workout! It’s nice to have some dedicated strength training time in my regular training mix.
Friday – Easy: 7.9 miles (8:18 pace)
I ran from home before work Friday morning and kept it super easy because I was definitely feeling the strength work from the previous two days!
Saturday – Easy: 6.0 miles (8:19 pace)
We went to see Richard’s family for the weekend. After being up later than usual on Friday night, I slept in and got a later start Saturday morning. I think we might officially be to the point where this is no longer acceptable from a weather perspective. The heat and humidity zapped me and I struggled to get an easy six miles in.
Sunday – Easy: 10.5 miles (8:23 pace)
I wised up on Sunday and got out the door a bit earlier. It was actually raining for the majority of the run (just a light drizzle) and that felt really nice. I got in my “long run” for the week on a nice out and back stretch of country road (half paved and half dirt).
Total – 52.6 miles of running + 2.0 hours of strength