Doing Painful Scary Things

Week in review for June 20-26, 2016:

I guess the theme of this week could be doing painful and/or somewhat scary workouts!  It almost always "hurts so good", though!

Mileage: 54

Monday – HIIT bootcamp with elliptical warm-up (45 minutes each).  Why don’t jumping lunges ever get any easier??  We will give the painful and scary of this day to them and excessive burpees, although my triceps were what ended up sore for 3 days.

Tuesday – 12.26 miles total with a workout and double.  My morning run was 9.16 miles with 8 x 0.25 hill repeats in the middle.  Holy hill this was hard!  Relatively speaking, 2 miles total of quality is a short workout, but on repeat 1 I was already gasping for air.  The hill I used had around 100 feet of elevation gain in 0.25 mile, but it’s not evenly distributed – I would guesstimate it’s about 250 m with intense uphill, then 100 m with gentler uphill, followed by 50 m with barely there incline.  In the end, I summed this workout up as “Hill repeats:  All the work of track repeats with none of the fast splits to show for it.” 

My average pace for the whole 9.1 was 7:33, and my paces on the 0.25 uphills were between 7:22-7:42.  This was my second time running this workout on the same hill, so I compared my average splits from today with the workout I did there in November, and was pleasantly surprised that my splits from today’s workouts averaged 2.3 seconds per quarter mile repeat faster (that's over 9 seconds per mile pace)!  I don’t think I am in as good of shape now as I was then, but hopefully this means I am progressing!  Never would 7:30ish pace make me breathe so hard as running up this hill.  Luckily I had forgotten how painful this workout was so I wasn't scared of it beforehand - hopefully I don't have it again until I forget how intensely and differently hill repeats hurt.

My second run was 3.12 miles in 7:28 average in 92 degrees.  2-a-days were terrifying to me for a long time, then they were painful, and now I seem to have hit my stride with them - fingers crossed!

Wednesday - Today wasn't painful or scary, just normal (some would consider 4:50 a.m. alarms both painful and scary, though, so we will go with that!)!  10.12 base pace miles (7:31 average) with Missy.  I am so thankful to have Missy to run with!  Running friends are the best, and who else would get up at 4-something to hang out?

Thursday - 11.6 miles with 8.5 in the morning and 3.1 in the evening.  The scary of this was running 11.6 miles 2 days before a race, which I'm not sure is something I've ever done before and feels like a horrible idea.  I ran with Missy in the morning and she was really tired, so my miles with her were slower and my average was 7:55.  I was only supposed to run 8 miles, but I forgot that I also had 6 x 20 second strides (with 40 second jog recoveries) until I was at about 7.9, so ended up running a little farther to get those in.  It's easy for me to forget those - especially if I am running and talking with Missy - because it's not a workout that my whole run is based around, and is tacked on at the end of easy miles.

My second run was scary due to a heat index of 103!  However, now that I've had 4 solid second runs in a row, I am going to say that I am in a groove with them.  I think my coach also structures them better than I did when I tried them here and there on my own, so that makes a big difference!  My average pace was 7:19.  Jon ran this one "with" me (e.g., we both ran the YMCA loop while Albani was on the Kids Zone inflatables...on days like these she always tells me I need to run farther so she has longer to play...I believe this began due to her staying in for 2 hours a couple of times when I did long runs when Jon was out of town).

What was I thinking when I agreed to summer 2-a-days?!

Friday - A day off -- now that is truly scary, bahahaha!  Of course I had to do a little to keep the workout streak going (almost to 30 months or 2.5 years now!), but I kept it very minimal with 15 minutes easy on the elliptical.

Saturday - 14 miles total, split into 3.4 (7:45), 3.1 (6:18), 7.5 (7:38) - but I kept the gaps between these miles pretty short, definitely under 5 minute a pop. By definition, 5Ks are uber painful (the struggle is real). However, this one wasn't painful, even though it was in the middle of a long run and at 88 degrees "feels like" temperature (so the painful and scary for this workout goes to the summer weather and 8:00 a.m. race start). The secret to making it not painful was running the first mile at half marathon pace, bahaha! But I walked away with an overall win (men and women), a solid progressive tempo run, and my long run mileage, which were the objectives, so all was good. Details here. 

My mini-me doing scary things, also at the Duck Fest

Sunday - 6 mile shake out (7:40).  The beginning of a shake out run the day after a long run or race is always scary (plus I was up until 11:00 p.m. on Saturday night, which was also scary for me)!  On these 6 mile runs, I always feel better on mile 6 than on mile 1 though! 

My final painful and scary for the week goes to the amount of laundry generated from 9-10 workouts a week!  For most workouts, I'm only wearing a sports bra, shorts, and socks (occasionally a visor), so what is truly scary is how bad this would be in the winter! 

It was impossible to get a good angle; 4 days of workout clothing on the drying rack