And Now It's June!

This was a planned cut-back week, but with traveling for work and for a family visit, I didn't feel like I got the full benefit because I was wiped out from the trips (plus I ran a little farther than planned - surprise). I ran in 3 different states this week!

Week of May 30 through June 5: 

Mileage: 44.1

Monday - Cross-training as usual. My hotel had a nice gym and I did 45 minutes on the elliptical, 30 minutes of strength training, and 15 minutes on the spin bike. 

Tuesday - 10.1 miles along Chicago's Riverwalk and Lakeshore Trail. 3.3 warm up (7:35), 2.5 miles uptempo (6:28), 4.2 more miles (7:35). I didn't plan any hard workouts while out of town, but wanted to get a little turnover in my legs so this was a nice moderate effort. It was harder than it should have been, but I just expect that while away from home. 



View of Navy Pier from the trail

Lakeshore Trail

Wednesday - 8 recovery miles (7:55) along Lakeshore Tail, with 6 strides in the last mile. It was pouring for most of this run, and I was draggy but glad to be out there. The benefit of the rain was that there were dramatically fewer people out. Have I mentioned that I prefer deserted country roads to big cities any day?!

Thursday - Back in Missouri! This was a day off pre-race, and I was so zonked from the trip I was thankful. I just did 30 minutes easy on the elliptical (plus about 7 hours of cleaning, laundry, and yard work - happy day off work to me, eh?). 

Friday - 4.1 miles/30 minute shake out run with 6 strides in the final mile (7:18 pace for the whole shebang). Felt a lot more normal on this run after "sleeping in" until almost 7:00 a.m., and reveled in my solitary farm roads. 

Saturday - 10.4 miles total, including the River Run 10K in Wichita, Kansas. We will just say that this 10K felt eerily like the final 6.2 miles of a marathon! It was rough from the gate, but often after the first mile or so I relax and feel better. Not on this one! I came close to dropping out, finished over 3 minutes off my goal time, and my pace was 19 second per mile slower than my recent 10K tempo run that I finished with some left in the tank. Oy! I finished this one with nothing left in the tank and my cool down mile was 9:30 pace and barely manageable. Yikes! We will just say lesson learned on combining a ton of traveling with a race, and I also worry I may be getting sick after spending 18 hours in a confined space with someone who had bronchitis (perhaps I was also dehydrated/depleted?). I could blame a 60-90 second failure on the heat and humidity we had today, but something else has to give for a 3 minute failure! Embarrassing!  Let's just hope that this is my Epic Fail of 2016 and there will be no more of that.

Running happy on my warm-up (this did not last into the race!)



Awards

Sunday - 11.5 miles base pace (7:38) with my Wichita running buddy Kim. After feeling like death on Saturday I almost didn't run this, but since I had already scheduled to meet her and didn't want to cancel I decided to give it a go. I was glad I did, as after a slow start I felt closer to normal. Guess the rest and nutrition I emphasized on Saturday was good for something. Thankful as always to be out there - good days and bad! Now tomorrow may be a day (mostly) off...  I start my "formal" marathon training schedule tomorrow, but Mondays are non-running days and I can choose some cross-training or a day off.  I will always do at least a little cross-training to maintain the workout streak, but 20 minutes of easy swimming is pretty much a day off!