August Angst

August 2023 in review!

Total mileage for the month:  396

• July 31-Aug. 6: 92.2
• Aug. 7-13: 95.6
• Aug. 14-20: 95.1
• Aug. 21-27: 75.3
• Aug. 28-Sep.3: 92.5

#augustangst

Races:

• Aug. 12: Riverside 5000 in 20:21 for definitive August angst, but also 2nd overall female and 1st masters female!

Workouts:

• Aug. 2: 5 mile threshold with a random 0:30 surge each mile (4 warm up + 4 cool down for a 13 mile morning). A different person in the workout group got to pick where the surge happened each mile, which was fun, but those definitely made this deceptively harder than a steady threshold, or maybe it was the dew point of 74*! I was hoping to start in the 6:30s and work down, but I ended up staying there with splits of 6:30, 6:36, 6:30, 6:33, 6:33. That felt harder than I'd hoped but a heat/humidity calculator said a tempo effort of 6:32 was equivalent to 6:17 in good weather, so here is hoping. I really enjoyed the workout, just felt like I was working harder than my Garmin told me!
• August 5: Long run workout described below.
• Aug. 8: 2 mile threshold, 0.25 jog, 4 x 0.5 harder with 0.25 jogs, 2 mile threshold (13 miles total). We had better weather for this one (68*!) so I expected it would feel good but it did not. My paces were all over the place and 6:45 felt like 6:25. Threshold miles were: 6:46, 6:21, 6:46, 6:45 and 0.5 reps were 3:15, 3:07, 3:11, 3:13; therefore the only part of this workout where I hit pace was mile 2 of the first threshold, but I think I pushed too hard to get there and fried my legs for the rest. But I got in 6 miles of work so not all was lost! This probably would have gone better if I'd run it on Aug. 9, with another recovery day after the 21 mile effort on Aug. 5, but...hindsight!
• August 19: Attempted split threshold long run workout described below.
• August 23: 12 x 4:00 at threshold with 1:00 jogs (12 miles total). I did this one by effort because the dew point was 78*, i.e., miserable. I ran pretty even and averaged about 6:40. It was a fairly long workout (60 minutes) to do in hot weather so even though I didn't run very fast I was proud that I completed it! Having the 1:00 jogs helped keep me from completely overheating.
• August 27: Attempted long run workout described below.
• August 30: 12 x 800 m with the first 400 m of each at threshold and the second 400 m faster (200 m recoveries, but 400 m after #6; 14 miles total). I was aiming for 1:38 on the first lap, and those splits were: 1:38, 1:34, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:38, 1:36, 1:35, 1:37, 1:36, 1:35, 1:34. I was aiming for 1:32 or faster on the second laps, and those splits were: 1:31, 1:30, 1:29, 1:31, 1:31, 1:31, 1:26, 1:27, 1:26, 1:26, 1:22, 1:21. I was happy to negative split and to finish strong! It was 65* which definitely helped.
• Strides: I lost track because I did 2-6 strides more days than not.
• Doubles: August 2, 7, 8, 10, 15, 16, 29, 30 (I didn't double during my cut-back week, which was also an extreme heat advisory week!)
• Favorite workout: August 30 went the best and I really liked shifting gears mid-way each rep! In my mind it was "just" 12 x 400 instead of 12 x 800 because the threshold lap didn't count - but in total it was 6 miles worth of work at about 6:00 pace, which seems really good compared to everything else this month. The extra recovery halfway through also broke it up nicely.

This one is very very angsty

Long Runs:

• Aug. 5: 21 miles (7:41) via 10 easy, 10 moderate, 1 cool down. I had 7:00 for our moderate pace target, but the heat index was 86* at 5:00 a.m. so we just went by effort and averaged 7:16, which I thought was pretty good considering. The final mile we pushed more and hit 6:48, which, again, seemed good in the conditions. We had 4 water stations and I carried a handheld that I refilled at each station, drinking 64 oz on this run which has to be a PR. I also left two bottles and a gel on the trunk of my car, and someone stole those, which was my major complaint about this day! They left my Goodr sunglasses that were sitting next to them and actually have a little value. Who takes someone's bottles of their car?? I've left bottles on my car thousands of time in the same parking lot, but no more I guess. One was my 2021 rabbitELITE bottle and the other was from when I was on Team nuun, which made me extra peeved.
• Aug. 13: 21.6 miles (8:24) for a fatigued long run that also ended up very wet since it rained nearly the whole 3 hours. I had 20 miles planned but we wanted to run a capybara shaped route so it got bumped up to 21.6 to complete that.
• Aug. 19: 22 miles (7:51) via 4 easy, 2 pick up, 8 easy, 2 pick up, 6 easy. The pick up miles were supposed to be threshold, but all I had was 6:50, 6:43, 7:05, 6:59 on them. The distance felt fine but the pace wasn't happening on this one.
• Aug. 27: 17 miles (7:43) via 2 easy, 5 moderate, 5 MP, 5 moderate. My moderate miles were around 7:45 but all I hit for MP was 7:10ish, which was discouraging.
• Favorite long run: I think August 5 was the best one.

Strava art

Post 22 mile #augustangst cake

#augustangst the morning after
running group night out

Running Highlights:

• Running performance was up and down, but I am glad to be out there! I've had some weird hormone stuff going on that I am blaming for my inconsistent performances and am hoping to figure that out soon. Or maybe I am just getting old!
• Running group had a fun 3-person birthday celebration night out.

Life Highlights:

• Albani returned to high school for her sophomore year.
• I returned to teaching one class at MSU, but I taught during the summer so it didn't feel like much of a transition.

Before hair color and cut

She was thrilled about this photo

Tradition!

My department at work had professional headshots
done for our website & asked for a group pic too

Books:

• Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur
• The Light We Lost by Jill Santopolo
• With My Little Eye by Joshilyn Jackson
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
• Finding Me by Viola Davis
• Note: Bold = 5 stars, and it has been many months since I last gave a 5!

Theme for the month:

• This month kind of felt like a grind, in running and life. There are always bright spots to be thankful for, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

Happy angst