Anniversary & Birthday Week, plus a 15K PR!

Week of September 12-18, 2016

Mileage: 61.3, with one super long run, one bootcamp, one set of strides, and one PR race.  We also celebrated one wedding anniversary (Jon and me) and one birthday (Albani's)!

Monday - Cross-training Monday with 30 minutes of elliptical warm-up and 45 minutes of bootcamp.  After no bootcamp last week it was nice to be back - although I really can't believe I'm saying that about squats.

Tuesday- 9 base miles (7:23) on a rolling loop (307 ft elevation gain per Strava).  This was just a nice and normal solo run!  When I finished I thought, "Tomorrow at this point I'll *only* have 15 more miles to go," hah.

Wednesday -  24.3 miles (7:24, fast finish mile 24 in 6:36).  I was pretty excited about this run when I wrote this somewhat scattered post about it!

Thursday - 7 recovery miles (8:03) with 7 strides in the last mile.  I was tired and hungry, but didn't feel as bad as I thought I might (no soreness).  I ran this with Missy, and it was nice to be meeting someone, as I think had I been solo I would have dragged my feet about getting started.  I also did 5 minutes of planks right after this run.

Friday - 3.2 recovery miles (7:52).  It took me 2 miles to feel halfway normal, and my legs were feeling Wednesday's run for sure (more so than on Thursday). Since I recovered so well after my 22 I didn't quite realize that my legs would feel the 24 so much - but using common sense, of course they would. I went into the 22 with more in the tank, so it makes sense that the 24 coming after my hardest training week would be harder to recover from. I've been working on foam rolling and wearing compression socks though! Albani likes to foam roll with me in the morning before we get ready. 

Focusing on recovery while my child puts things on me!

Saturday - 4.2 relaxed (7:33) with Kim. I felt a lot better on this short run than on Friday's, so cheers to recovering! We ran at Sedgwick County Park in Wichita, with 0 ft of elevation gain, haha!

Saturday was also Jon and my wedding anniversary! We celebrated by going to my race packet pick up, then to Tanganyika wildlife park and McDonald's with extended family (this was more for Albani's birthday and because I got a free pass to Tanganyika with my race; McDonald's was 200% for her because I loathe the place).  We were going to go out to dinner together while my parents babysat, but decided to instead stay home (at my parents' house) to rest up before my race and eat food that definitely wouldn't result in food poisoning or tummy troubles.  Yet another reason why Jon is my perfect match - he was perfectly content to do this and go on a date night another time!

Wedding day memories

 

Giraffe feeding

 

Feeding birds

The camel ride was my favorite!

 

Rhino feeding

Kangaroos

 

The only bright side of McDonald's was this adorable picture

 

Sunday - 13.5 total with 2.4 warm-up (7:33), 15K Tiger Trot (6:20), and 1.8 cool-down (8:10). I'm going to write a full race report on this one, but I was ecstatic to run under an hour with a 59:19! The only downside was that about 2.5 miles of the race were on awful rocky dirt roads and I slowed significantly on that part of the course; without that I would have easily been in the 58's. This was a certified course so also a real PR for me, and I felt great (I wasn't at all confident that I would coming off of a 24 miler during a 61 mile week)!

Albani ran the kids half mile at this event and had a photo finish for the win (coming from behind!)!  My new favorite picture for sure - and also proud because I took this one myself not too long after I'd finished my race. She has been fast finishing her training runs and it is clearly paying off. 

She can kick!

Sunday was also Albani's actual birthday! She ended up with two weekends of celebrating, with her swim party last weekend and family celebrations this weekend. I think she is a little spoiled, but very very loved. 

Celebrating at my parents' house

Finally, I've been into this song this week.  How can you listen to this and not speed up?  And by listen to, I mainly mean singing the lyrics in my head, as I only run with music on my solo easy runs, which I don't have too many of fortunately.

I'm officially 3 weeks out from my marathon, meaning that my mileage and long run distances are going to be decreasing so a little panic might ensue, haha!