There is no off-season when you're chasing big goals, but there are recovery phases

Week of March 6 through March 12, 2017

Mileage: 41.2, with a progression run + hard half mile, a set of strides, an edge-of-your-seat 12K race, and some strength training.  It was so nice to be back to a more normal routine this week, even though my mileage was lower since apparently I'm in a recovery phase.  :-)

This is how I felt after last week!

Monday - Cross-training Monday with 45 minutes elliptical and 35 minutes strength training.  I strength trained on my own instead of going to bootcamp class so I could control what I did, as my quads were not ready to do any strength moves yet!  I did mostly core and arm work, and for legs I only did dead lifts and glute bridges.  It was nice to be back to closer to normal routine, and this was the first day I started really salivating to run hard again!

Tuesday - 5.7 miles (7:01); a 5 mile progression run plus a hard half mile to get the legs going again, and to gauge if I should race on Saturday.  My progression run was slated to start at 7:40 and work down 10 seconds per mile to 7:00, but I was dying to speed up the entire way and ended up with miles of 7:31, 7:19, 7:10, 6:54, 6:45. Then my half mile hard was 2:49 (5:38 pace).  Last week I vacillated between celebrating my marathon and being sure I'd never run a mile under 8:00 again, so it was nice to know that my legs still worked!

Wednesday - 9.1 miles (7:15) with Missy and Danielle.  It was wonderful to be back to girls' group!  I also did 20 minutes of core and arm strength.

Thursday - 5.1 miles (7:05) with 6 strides in the last mile.  I almost always show Jon my splits from my morning runs while we are getting ready, even for easy runs (the perks of being married to someone who used to run competitively!).  He looked at these splits and said, "You had a 6:26 last mile, wow!" (this was due to the strides).  Then he changed that to, "Well, I guess that's your marathon pace and like me running an 8:15 last mile, so actually not impressive."  Paradigm shift, hah.

Friday - 3.5 miles (7:23) shake out, before a work day in Kansas City, which inevitably tires me out more than a "normal" work day.  No strength on Friday due to a Saturday race.

Saturday - The Big 12 12K race:  12.2 miles total, with 2.4 warm-up, 12K race (6:07), and 2.3 cool-down.  This course's elevation was brutal (about 400 feet of gain, with 150 feet of it being a non-stop hill that was all of mile 7), and the weather was not exactly ideal (snowing, windy, and 'feels like' 18*!), but this was still a wonderful event with some sweet overall awards!

My goal was to run for place, and I was really proud of myself for getting out there and running with women who I never thought I could compete with.  And guess what - I beat them!  I knew going in that I'd be racing for 2nd, as our local 2:3X marathoner (who is also my coach's wife) was racing, but I took that 2nd, and the eventual 3rd and 4th ladies sure didn't make it easy.  I'm excited to write a full race report about this, as it really got my competitive juices going and throughout the race 2nd certainly could have gone to any of the 3 of us, but I fought for it with all I had through the very end!

I wore my Garmin but I never looked at it during the race (my plan going in), as I knew the elevation would make for crazy splits and I needed to run by feel and with my competition - I also worried my splits would mess with my head, and I think they probably would have because they were:  5:57, 6:02, 6:13, 6:27, 6:01, 5:37, 6:42, and 5:43 for the final half mile (46:16 total for the almost 7.5 mile race) - they make sense when considered with the elevation chart, which I'll put in my race recap post, but they look super erratic on paper here!

Sunday - 5.7 mile recovery run (7:37) with Amy P.  It's amazing how much fresher I feel after shorter races versus half and full marathons...of course, this was also a run of under 6 miles!  Just following the schedule!