July is heeeeereerrrrrrreee!

June 27-July 3, 2016 weekly re-cap:

Mileage: 54.2



We started celebrating the 4th a little early

Monday - HIIT bootcamp + elliptical warm-up (45 minutes each for 90 minutes today).  The usual cross-training Monday!  It would probably be better for me to swim laps than to warm up on the elliptical before bootcamp, because I think the elliptical is pretty much a junk workout, but it's so much more work to swim!

Tuesday - 11.4 miles total.  Tuesday morning track work (details here) that included 2 x 2000 m., 2 x 1000 m. in 7:43, 7:43, 3:44, 3:45 and was 8.3 miles total; then 3.1 miles runch base pace (7:30 average). I ran the second run from my agency's Kansas City-area office and the course was not the best for a shake out because it started with a 0.4 mile uphill, but it was my only route option and was nice to come down the hill at the end. This was my first time running my second run on lunch (1:00ish), after my coach said it was fine to arrange it like this since I start my first run so early. It's a nice option to have on days that work and life make evening runs tricky! I knew that I would not want to run after 3 hours in the car returning to Springfield on Tuesday evening.

Wednesday - 10 miles base pace with 6 x 20 seconds strides in the final mile (7:29 average) on rolling hills (398 ft elevation gain per Strava).  The only reason this run didn't suck was because it was 64 degrees! Traveling always wears on me.

Thursday - 11.2 total, all base; morning 8.1 miles with Missy (7:51) and evening 3.1 miles (7:12).  My 5:10 a.m. alarm awoke me from a very deep sleep, which is usually not the case.  I was pretty excited to wake up at 5:10 instead of 4:50 - but going from a very deep sleep dream to out the door 20 minutes later at 5:30 was not the best start to the morning for me and I felt groggy.  Missy was doing her long run of 20 miles, so I felt a little like a slacker only joining her for 8, but I followed my schedule.  I was tempted to run 11 miles all in the morning so I also wouldn't have to deal with a second run, but I know the mileage is arranged as it is for a reason.  My second run was partially with Jon - he decided to see if he could keep up with me for the first mile and he did! I was not particularly looking forward to this run but felt great once I got started and ran a little faster than I was supposed to...or maybe I just wanted to be done!

Friday - 4 mile shake out run (7:29) + 45 minutes of HIIT bootcamp.  The second day in a row that my alarm woke me from a deep sleep!  It seems that my tired shake out runs always end up looking like progression runs, as I start out a bit tired and tight then loosen up and speed up each mile. 

Saturday - 11.1 mile cut-back long run (7:14)...who runs 11 miles, right?  I wanted to run 12, but I followed my plan.  I ran 2.1 miles to Casey's parents' house, 7 miles with Casey, and 2 miles home.  The pace ended up a little fast because Casey was using this as her weekly tempo run, so I was looking down at the 7:05 and 6:59 miles thinking that it was a little quick, but it also felt great and since it was such a short long run it was still easy.  I was supposed to do 6 x 20 second strides at the end of this but forgot - because I haven't had these at the end of a Saturday run and didn't look at my schedule for details before this run because I remembered that odd 11 and didn't think there was anything else to it. Oops!

"Long" run

Sunday - 6.4 miles base pace shake out (7:34).  I added the strides I forgot Saturday and also went a little over the 6 that was scheduled so I would get over 54 miles instead of 53.8 for the week.  It's the little things!  I also was out the door for this one 14 minutes after waking up to a text from Casey about meeting to run (we'd talked about it on Saturday but hadn't pinned down a time)...it's 6:46 a.m.; can I start at 7:00 - the answer is yes!



This is how my cat feels about it all!