My Hair is Always Dirty (Peak Week!)

Week of January 30-February 5, 2017 - a.k.a. peak week of Phoenix Marathon training!

Mileage: 67.6, with a hill + tempo workout, two doubles, my longest long run of this cycle with a fast finish, two bootcamp/strength workouts, and my highest mileage week of this training cycle

We emphasize recovery in the Ibbetson household!

"Work" is missing

Monday - Cross-training Monday with 40 minutes elliptical warm-up and 50 minutes strength training bootcamp...the usual!  Although Mondays are the best day for me to have off running, and I know that I need a day off each week to stay healthy, I always hate starting the week with a big fat 0 for my mileage!  #runnerproblems

Tuesday - 12.3 total, with 8 miles a.m. (7:18) and 4.3 miles runch (7:37).  For the morning run, I met not one running partner, but four!  With Missy, Danielle, Ashley, and Amy  R. it was our largest women's group run yet - awesomeness!  It was 60 degrees on my lunch run -- how's that for more January awesomeness? 

This was also the last day of January!

January mileage + snot on my Garmin from using my gloves as Kleenexes (just keeping it real!)

Wednesday - 10.2 miles total (7:24 for all), with 3ish warm-up, 6 x 0.25 hill repeats with downhill recoveries that were 0.25-0.3ish, 2 mile tempo (6:43, 6:19) straight off of repeat 6, 2ish cool-down.  I've run this workout once before, but ran a different course this time so it wasn't comparable.  Missy and Danielle were really good friends and did this workout too!

The warm-up was somewhat hilly to get to the workout hill, then for the hill repeats we ran back and forth in a bowl, so repeats 1, 3, 5 were on one hill and repeats 2, 4, 6 were on a different hill -- this was good, as one was steep at the beginning then tapered off toward the top, and the other was consistent and longer - although you can't tell the difference from the elevation chart below.  Then when the 2 mile tempo started I was still going uphill and into the wind, so the first mile of the tempo ended up just sucking  - at the beginning of it I wasn't even sub-7:00.  My time of 6:43 is slower than my marathon goal pace, but it sure felt like tempo effort (my tempo pace range is 6:05-6:20).  I ran mile 2 of the tempo in 6:19, so just barely in my tempo range and slower than my PR half pace; I am not sure if I just didn't have it or if we picked a horrible course- or both!  Missy and Danielle said that the first mile was awful for them as well, so that made me feel better.

As the tempo portion drew on, I kept thinking, "Now I know why I originally didn't have a workout scheduled this week (between the Hardest Workout Ever and the upcoming 24)"; that changed when I missed my 1K repeats due to bronchitis.  But now I have times to beat on this course...although if have this workout again, I may move it back to the other course!  Then the cool-down was hilly too, and Danielle commented that the cool-down was the first time we'd run miles in the 8:00s together.  When I got home afterward, I told Jon that I wanted to take some vacation time from work and go to a breakfast buffet, haha!  Unfortunately I had an 8:00 a.m. client appointment so couldn't.  I was so.hungry.all.the.time.all.week (I went through an economy size jar of peanut butter).  I also did a 10 minute core workout on Wednesday.

El-e-vation (sing it like U2)

Thursday - 11.3 total; 8.1 a.m. (7:31) and 3.2 (7:34) runch.  The morning run was with Missy, Danielle, and Amy R., and we were all tired at the beginning (7:55 first mile), but felt good at the end (7:20 last mile).  This was my last double day before Phoenix, and I realized that when I pick them back up it will be light after work if I want to do them later!  I tend to feel a little better on the second run if I do it later, with a longer duration and more food between runs, but over the winter it's sure been nice to have one run in daylight when I run twice.  In the spring it will just depend on my family's schedule on the days I have them.

Friday - 3.3 mile shake out (7:34) and 30 minutes of strength training.  I strength trained on my own instead of going to bootcamp so I could control what moves I did (i.e., no jumping lunges or jumping squats!).  I was sore last week on Saturday after Friday's bootcamp, and I didn't want a repeat of that for this week's long run - even though it didn't seem to hurt me during last week's long run workout, it just doesn't seem like the best idea in the world!

Saturday -  24.4 miles (7:11) - my longest long run!  I did 19 steady, 5 progressive fast finish (6:52, 6:44, 6:45, 6:33, 6:17), then cooled down to 2:55:00 because I wanted that duration on my feet - so that hopefully I will now have run for a longer duration than my marathon will take me.  I ran 9 alone, then 13 with Amy P. (she had 3 fast finish so our runs meshed perfectly), then the final 2.4 solo.  I hoped to average 7:15 on this run for a confidence boost, so I felt really good about ending up averaging 7:11 in the conditions we had.  The windchill was 12* when I started and 17* when I finished, and the SSE wind was 17 mph!  I ran mostly east and west to minimize it, but I still felt it going east, and the south miles were tough.  Most of miles 22 and 23 were into the wind so I could have planned that better with the fast finish situation, but with courses and elevation from my house I think it was still the best bet.  I felt strong throughout, and for the first 3 fast finish miles I felt like I was picking it up but also holding back.  The final 2 miles were tough, but the 6:33 mile was over half into the wind, and the 6:17 was, well, a 6:17 mile with 23 miles already on my legs!  I felt like I was running out of fuel a bit towards the end (I started dreaming of breakfast buffets!), so I will definitely take 3 gels during my marathon to sustain me more (I took 2 during this run).  After this run and the Hardest Workout Ever in crazy wind, I now feel prepared to run a cold, windy marathon...so I guess I will run a marathon in Arizona in 3 weeks, haha!

Splits 1

Splits 2

I tested out part of my Phoenix race outfit; under layers!

Sunday - 6.1 mile recovery run (7:32) with Amy R.  I was expecting my legs to be dragging on this one, so when my watch beeped 1 mile I looked at my split to see exactly how slow I was (I typically try to avoid looking at my watch on recovery runs, as I want to run them by feel to keep them easy), and I was quite surprised to see a 7:38!  Huh.  I guess the stretching, foam rolling, legs up the wall, and compression sock wearing I did on Saturday paid off.  This almost seemed like more of an accomplishment than the 24 miler!

This week I also finalized my spring race plans (through June) for after Phoenix!  They were a bit of a puzzle to put together, but I'm pretty pumped about them.  I'm going to be racing three halves, two 5Ks, a 10,000 m on the track, and maybe a 15K!