TBD Training - Week 6 of 16

Week starting thoughts: As I said in my entry on Monday, I'm still going to follow this training plan (mostly) until I figure my sh!t out for a fall marathon (or something).

Yurp.

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength
Wasn't sure how this would go since it's been, um, like 3 weeks since I've done strength training? Yeah. Turns out it went pretty well! I didn't have to lower weights on anything, but some exercises definitely seemed harder than they were previously.

Only had time for 3 super sets because apparently I was just slow-moving today, 'cause I worked out for nearly an hour. I remember when 30 minutes of lifting was all I could mentally handle, and now I'm going strong for an hour and disappointed when I have to miss out on some of my lifts! #progress
UPDATE: It's Tuesday, and zomg I'm sore.

Tuesday
Planned: #10kTuesday
Did: 6.20 mi @ 8:43/mi avg
Decided I didn't want to just do a 10k, needed a little more structure to the run, but not too much structure. Set out with a goal to do a "whatever" first 5k, followed by a "faster whatever" second 5k. Results were pretty spot on.
First 5k = 29:00 (9:42, 8:53, 9:16 mile splits)
Second 5k = 25:06 (8:19, 7:49, 8:02 mile splits)
Woot! The faster 5k felt hard, but not too hard. It was surprisingly low humidity this morning, so wasn't too much of a shock to my system.

Wednesday
Planned: XT + 2mi
Did: 7.8 mi bike + 2 mi treadmill
Bike ride was good but HOT. Rode the Upstate Loop w/ Robin but we omitted the extra hill climb loop mostly for time constraints but also because HOT. Averaged 13.6 mph moving speed! We're getting faster!
Hopped on the treadmill to get a quick 2 done before I had to get back for a meeting. Averaged just below an 8:00 pace, and I wore my TOE SHOES for the first time in a few years! I lifted in them yesterday and remembered how much I miss them. Let's see how sore my calves are tomorrow.
BTW all of my muscles are still sore from Monday. 😐

Thursday
Planned: 4mi Hills
Did: 4.29 mi @ 9:02/mi avg with 8x hill repeats
Did these in the morning at work and oof, humidity. There isn't one great place to do hill repeats here, so I ran to several different hilly sections on my normal work run routes and did each a few times. Worked out pretty well and made the repeats less monotonous.
The first hill I did 3x, the second set of 2 hills (it's a valley, so it's a down-up-down-up type thing) I did 2x, then I ran up one final hill heading back towards work campus for a total of 8 hill sprints. None of the hills are very large or steep, but it's the best I've got around here.

Not terribly consistent, but decent paces.

Bottom of the "valley" hills. It's hot.

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: 20min walk at lunch
All-day meeting on Friday ran late so I couldn't make it to yoga. Opted for a short walk outside (yuck, hot!) during our lunch break. Still got all 10k steps for the day!

Saturday
Planned: 12 mi
Did: 12.09 mi @ 10:18/mi avg
Ran from home to meet up with Megan & Robin for the bulk of today's miles on the Swamp Rabbit. Got in a speedy 8:10 for Mile #3! It was already steamy at 7am. Ugh. The middle miles were a slow slog through the humidity and heat. Was nice to get the miles done with friends!

Sunday
Planned: 8 mi
Did: 20.5 mi bike ride
Instead of another run today, I opted to ride since Megan & Robin were planning to do an early road ride. I planned a nice route for us through Dacusville and we enjoyed the challenging but nice rolling hills through the country roads.

Week ending thoughts: I'm finding it hard to strike the right balance between sticking to a training plan working towards specific goals vs. having the flexibility to do things I want to do. Example: if I were still officially "in training" for the 50k, I would have felt obligated to run 8 miles on Sunday instead of join friends for a bike ride. Both are excellent workouts, but one is specific to a goal... the other is for "fun". I love the drive and motivation and satisfaction I get from having goals, working hard to reach them, and the feeling of (hopefully) achievement on race day. But I also love the freedom to just do fun athletic things because I feel like it. The struggle is real, yo.