Cold, Hot, Cold, HOT!

Week of January 9-15, 2017

Mileage:  54.7, with a tiny tempo, a double, two sets of strides, a bootcamp, a flight to Arizona, and a PR half marathon!

Monday -  Cross-training Monday was bootcamp (50 min.) with an elliptical warm-up (40 min.).  My recovery from last week's 20 miler was better than my recovery from my previous two long runs, which I was very thankful for and accredit to not being depleted going into the long run this time.  I felt great on this workout!

Tuesday - 10.4 windy miles (7:25).  It was 50 degrees for this run (hot-ish), which I really appreciated!  The wind was blowing at 26 mph, but I'll take these conditions over the "feels like" 4-6 degrees I was running in last week any day.  I ran with Missy and Danielle for most of this, and we mostly ran east and west; I only had 1.3 miles directly into the south wind.

Wednesday - 12.3 windy miles; 8.1 a.m. (7:04 average for all; tiny 2 mile tempo in 12:15 via 6:08/6:07) and 4.2 at lunch (7:51).  It was again hot-ish (47 degrees a.m. & 66 degrees at lunch) but super windy!  I did my tempo miles with the wind to my back, haha!  That did, however, take me off my normal tempo course, a pretty flat loop that primarily runs north and south, and put me on a hillier route so I'm not even sure it helped.  My coach told me not to run any faster than 6:10 on the tempo, so I was kind of trying to run 6:09s; pushing the envelope as usual, without trashing my legs.  As usual, the way I felt on the 2 mile tempo was a mix of confidence-destroying and confidence-boosting.  I usually need at least 2 miles to really get into a tempo, as displayed in how I negative split every good tempo I run (such as this 8 miler, this 6 miler, and this 4 miler during my current training cycle).  So on these little taper tempos, the first mile is often a lot of "There is no way I can run this pace for a half marathon and possibly not even for 2 miles" in my head, but then by the end of mile 2 I'm thinking, "Okay, this is brisk but sustainable."  I walked away from the tempo confident that I should NOT start at 6:10 pace in my half, but I never planned to anyway, as I figured my first mile should be about 6:20, followed by a slew of 6:15s.

Thursday - 7.2 miles (7:16) with Danielle.  It was 59 degrees when we started and 40 degrees when we finished - and very windy!  I was glad I checked the hourly forecast in advance so I knew it would drop and started in long sleeves and carrying gloves.  7 seemed pretty short!

Friday - 4.2 mile shake out with 4 strides (7:34) from my parents' house in a 10 degree windchill (cold!), plus a flight from Wichita, Kansas to Phoenix, Arizona with my dad!

Arizona (hot)!

Kansas (cold!)

Saturday - 2.4 mile shake out with 4 strides (7:25).  As expected, mile 1 was sluggish (8:00ish) and mile 2 was "okay, maybe I am ready to race" (7:00ish)!

Sunday - Rock n Roll Arizona half marathon, which yielded a bright shiny new half marathon PR of 1:21:26 (6:13 pace) - HOT!  Results are here.  Race report(s) forthcoming - I only had the energy for this post tonight because it was already written sans photos!  I was thrilled with my result.  I went into the race with a plan and executed it perfectly so I was also proud of that.  The course was not nearly as easy as White River, so improving my time from that race was even sweeter.  I'm savoring the runner's high!  My total mileage for Sunday with warm-up and cool-down was 18.