Week in Review - Last Week in April!

This week was getting rolling again - although it hit a bump with some bad Indian food on Thursday!  Now to stay rolling and not get injured!

This week was also all kinds of off schedule, with getting back into a groove, cramming for a race, and a Sunday race all rolled into one week.

Total miles: 46.8

Monday – 1 mile warm-up, 8 mile tempo in 6:46 average pace, 1.5 mile cool-down (details here).  I learned that I am not in good enough shape to run tempos on the course we chose, as the incline on the way out nearly killed me, so that on the way back on the decline instead of negative splitting as planned I could basically just hold on.  But it was good enough and served the intended purpose.

Tuesday – 6 mile recovery run (7:56 average) with 6 x 20-30 second strides in the final mile.  The combination of 14 miles Friday, 10.3 miles in a double plus leg strength on Saturday, a bike ride and a day at Silver Dollar City on Sunday, and Monday’s long tempo after some time off exhausted my legs.  I followed this with 15 minutes of body weight leg strength (squats, single leg squats, lunges of all types, calf raises) since I missed bootcamp on Monday.

Wednesday – 6.5 miles (7:30 average) – 5 miles easy then pushed the final mile in 6:38.  My legs were still tired.  I followed this with a 20 minute core workout (tons of plank variations, supermans, wood choppers with a kettle bell, etc.) since I was missing bootcamp all week (don’t want to go too close to a race).

Thursday – 4 mile shake-out that was also an unintentional progression run (splits of 7:57, 7:29, 7:18, 6:58), then I did 20 minutes on the elliptical because I had extra time.  It was a beautiful morning and difficult to keep this one short, but coming off injury into a race week with 6 days of running is already pretty darn risky!  Thursday night I went out for Indian food with a friend who was in town, and then spent the majority of the time from 1:00-6:00 a.m. laying on my bathroom floor (it was not pretty!).

Friday –30 minutes super easy on the elliptical (my day off while keeping the workout streak going); I planned to swim this morning but after being up most of the night with food poisoning I did not get up at 5:30 a.m. to swim nor at 7:00 to go to work.  I also needed to stay painfully close to the bathroom until about 1:00 p.m.  I was able to stay hydrated with fluids but this illness really worried me so close to a race.  I kept the streak up with a short and easy elliptical jaunt, but I didn't want to!

Saturday – 4.1 miles pre-race shake-out with 6 x 20-30 second strides in the final mile (7:32 average for it all together).  I felt weak on this run from lack of nutrition on Friday, but not horribly bad.

Sunday – Prairie Fire Half Marathon (plus warm up and cool down for 15.6 miles total). I finished in 1:27:52 (6:42 average pace) and considering it felt like all things had doomed me for this race I was ecstatic with that! I will post a more detailed race report but here are my splits and favorite picture. My husband beat his half goal time by running 1:45, and my daughter ran a PR mile of 10:56! Details here.

Prairie Fire was a family affair!