Pre-vacation week

Week beginning thoughts: Well, it's Tuesday and I'm starting this, so not starting the week off great. Motivation is low because we leave Saturday for vacation and I'm not really training for anything, so most things are approached with "eh, whatever" attitude.

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: nothing

Tuesday
Planned: #10kTuesday
Did: 6.23 mi w/ 4x800, 1x400 at the track
Did the early run downtown group today and the run leader decided it was a good day for a track workout. 800m repeats! This was a great workout, fun to do with a group of people, and I finally got to use the Greenville High School track for the first time. Woohoo! The lights aren't on in the early morning, but it's light enough around that you can see all the way around the track. I paced off of Matt (the self-declared run lead for the day) for the first 3 repeats, but pulled back for the last one. Finished off with a 400 and then we all ran back to the start. I had a little extra to finish off 10k, but felt great. Stretched at the end.

Splits for the 800s:
3:09, 3:15, 3:17, 3:24

1:32 for the 400

My goal was to keep everything sub-7 pace, and I did that... yay!

Wednesday
Planned: strength (make up for Monday)
Did: flow yoga
Met up with Megan & Robin for a free "yoga on the square" session in downtown Greenville. It was actually pretty challenging! Felt great though, and really glad the rain stopped in time for the class to be held. Hopefully we can do it again sometime!

Thursday
Planned: run or bike
Did: nothing

Friday
Planned: ?
Did: nothing

Saturday
Did: 6.38 mi @ 9:20/mi
Got up early and did a little over 6 miles in the neighborhood. Caught the sunrise and felt good to get some miles done since the rest of this week has pretty much been a wash.

Yessss.

Week before vacation appears to be challenging due to the "omg need to get things finished before I leave" pressure at work. It's ok, I know that my baseline fitness is good enough that one week of "eh" won't be too bad.

Sunday
.... this blog will get cut short due to VACATION starting on Saturday. We're planning to bike and of course do #10kTuesday, but other than that, it will be free of structured workouts.

Solo week

Week beginning thoughts: It's a solo parenting week, and it's supposed to rain a lot. I'm hopeful and determined, but realizing that things may fall apart.
Also, oh no, I have no training plan to follow! What shall I do?? Should I do another cycle of mile training? Need to contemplate and look at fall (!!!!) races. Yassss fall races.

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength

Did FOUR sets of each exercise today vs. the typical three, and tried to lower the weight / do higher reps for each final set. Felt good, felt strong, felt energized. I forgot to log last week's lift on StrengthLevel, but it wasn't a solid workout anyway.


Tuesday
Planned: #10kTuesday
Did: 6.26 mi @ 8:46/mi
Ran as soon as I arrived at work and it was already gross and hot and humid. Got it done, though, and as always felt happy to have it finished before the workday.

Wednesday
Planned: bike
Did: 11.3 mi @ 15.9 mph bike ride
Solo lunch ride, didn't feel like doing much because boy my legs were sore still from Monday! Did the short Upstate loop +  hill, but added a little extra at the back edge of campus for an extra mile vs the usual route. Felt good and kept decent speed despite the soreness. Also, it was hot.

Thursday
Planned: #speedworkThursday
Did: 4.17 mi @ 8:08/mi avg
Well, I'd intended on just an easy 4 when I headed out, but with the temperature AND humidity below 80, this felt really good! An oddball early morning thunderstorm brought some much-needed relief from the awful heat.

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: nothing

Saturday
Planned: long run or bike
Did: nothing
Early morning thunderstorms and a predicted all-day rain prompted a decision for a day trip to Asheville. Of course aside from the morning t-storms, it was gorgeous all day. Oh well.

Sunday
Planned: long run or bike
Did: 4.72 mi @ 9:16/mi
Blah. Had to wait until the afternoon to start this run, and by then the thunderstorms were rumbling in the distance. I stayed close to home and went back when I thought it was about to let loose, but didn't end up actually raining until much later in the day. A little disappointed to cut this short unnecessarily, but I did not want to get caught out in a thunderstorm.

These clouds did not look friendly.

Nutrition Summary
Decided the daily notes were too much, so I'm just being mindful, still tracking, and then assessing each week. I'm proud of myself for the amount of vegetables I've eaten this week. For one thing, it's more than usual in general... I had veggies at lunch and dinner every day during the work week! Not only that, but I did it while Scott was traveling for work which is an even bigger feat. It's easy for me to get lazy when he's away and it's just D and I eating dinner in the evenings, but I made sure to cook veggies for us and then have leftovers for lunches the next day. Counting that as a small win for this week.

Week-ending thoughts: Started off quite strong and really pooped out at the end of the week. I think I just was worn out by the end, so a few days off/easy was probably a good thing. Not sure what I want to focus on training for the rest of the summer...

Race Mile Week

Week Beginning Thoughts: 
Well it's actually Monday morning and I'm writing this... so that's a good start! I've talked enough about my thoughts on the Mile that I won't include that here. I did finally register for the event, so there's that.

It's happening.

I also feel like I need to focus on nutrition a bit... I've been half-heartedly tracking with MyFitnessPal for the longest time, but haven't really paid attention to it. I usually end up tracking breakfast and lunch, then I forget about dinner. If I'm going to meet any of my strength-building goals, I need to make sure I'm getting enough calories, and the right balance of macros. So, I'll be posting my % of goal calories and my macro splits each day, for accountability. We'll see how this goes.

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength
Nutrition: 92% of calorie goal

Apparently I need more carbs? I had rice for lunch and pasta for dinner!

Knowing I had to take it easy on the legs already made me not super excited about lifting today, then there were some people in the gym who aren't normally there at the time I am, and our routines got overlapped and I got irritated so I just quit and did stretching/PT stuff. Better than nothing but still... blergh.

Meh.

Tuesday
Planned: track meet Mile incorporated into #10kTuesday
Did: 3.3 mile warm-up / 1-Mile track race / 2 mile post-race cooldown
Nutrition: 81% of calorie goal

Needed more protein.

Race report here

Wednesday
Planned: bike
Did: 15.8 mi @ 17.0 mph
Nutrition: 61% of calorie goal 👎

Pretty darn good! But not enough calories overall.

Rode at lunch with a group today and ended up super fast! Not sure where that came from, but I'll take it. Clearly I didn't run fast enough on Tuesday because my legs did not feel tired!

Thursday
Planned: run?
Did: 3.4 mi @ 8:22/mi
Nutrition: 124% of goal (I blame the beers... 🍺)

Needed more protein.

Well then... I went out for an "easy 3" and ended up with a pretty solid paced 3-ish. Not bad!

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: rest
Nutrition: 105% of goal

I think I just put cheese on everything... 

Busy day at work, just needed a rest day.

Saturday
Planned: long run or mountain bike?
Did: 12.02 mi @ 9:12/mi 
Nutrition: uhhhh, didn't totally track today

I'd thought about going to this group run + yoga thing at a local running shop, but I opted for a) a little more sleep and b) a little less social interaction, and both were an excellent idea. I needed some long slow miles to be alone in my thoughts, and that's exactly what I got. Oddly my first and last miles were the fastest (below 8:30/mi) the rest were between 9-10 mins.

Sunday
Planned: long run or mountain bike?
Did: 19.4 mi bike ride pulling trailer
Nutrition: 60% of goal

Apparently this is normal.

Pulled D in the bike trailer to the Children's Museum downtown then back home. Not a fast or hard ride, but definitely worked the legs! I love being able to bike commute around Greenville.

Week Ending thoughts:
It doesn't even feel like a race week by this point... obviously the mile didn't go totally as planned, though it was totally as expected. Feels like a really solid week of training, though.

Nutrition-wise, I apparently get a larger portion of my calories from fat than I'd thought. I don't mind it, and I feel good. I could stand to consume a bit more protein, but between Greek yogurt or eggs for breakfast, and a serving of meat for lunch & dinner, I'm not sure where else to add it in. I also struggle with getting sufficient calories on hard workout days... my default is to add cheese to everything to pack on calories, which I'm totally OK with, but perhaps I can find a better way to achieve my goals each day.

Race Report: GTC All-Comers Track Meet - 1 Mile

I'll be honest, I woke up nervous for this event on Tuesday morning. I haven't been nervous for a race in forever, not even my last marathon, really. I think it's the smaller crowd and knowing that EVERYBODY CAN SEE ME for the entire race. I don't know, I get self-conscious about that kind of thing. 

"What if I go out too fast and then everybody sees me fall apart at the end?"
"What if I'm so far behind the rest of the pack and finish last?"

"What if I'm the WORST at this and people think I have no business running in a track meet?"

Totally irrational, and yeah, the answer to everyone of those questions is "Well... so what?" but still... yes, these are thoughts circling through my head all day.

The plan for the evening was to get home from work, grab a snack, and run over to the track (about 2.5 miles from my house). I figured this would ensure I was warmed up enough, and would also be a way to make sure I got all 6.2 miles of #10kTuesday done. In hindsight, I wish I had just run like 4 miles in the morning, then left the rest to the track meet and just drove there... oh well.

The evening went just as intended, and I arrived at the track right around 6pm after a 2.8 mi run @ 8:53/mi avg. Ooops, too fast for a warm-up. I even tried to take it VERY SLOW. During the run, I started realizing that my goal of sub-6 was not likely to happen, primarily due to:

Feels like 96F, zero wind

I haven't trained in the heat. I know that's a cop-out excuse and I totally COULD have trained in the heat. But ugh. Mornings are so much nicer! Anyway, I started adjusting my expectations (let's be honest, I'd started adjusting them well before this day).

Got there and got my bearings, signed up (there were no bibs or chips for timing), and then hung around in the few patches of shade I could find.

The Track.

Meet Schedule

I debated even doing the warm-up laps, but figured it would be a good idea just to get myself out on the track. I felt a lot less nervous after I actually got out there and ran a couple of laps. 

The kids races and the 100m went by pretty quickly, and next thing I knew, it was time for the mile. They split the mile into two heats... sub-7 pace, and above 7 pace. I was nervous about running in the "fast" heat (because I didn't want to be last), but it was completely reasonable for me to be there, so out I went. At least I would get it done with?

I lined up, there were about a dozen of us, and then we were off!

The biggest concern was going out too fast, so I made sure to settle into a comfortable pace. Thankfully there were several other runners who were going about the right speed, so I paced off of them. I checked my time at the first lap and was right at 1:30. I didn't think I could hold that pace for 3 more laps, but at least I knew I was doing the right thing so far.

I hit my lap button manually at each lap, and it wasn't until the third lap (about 600m to go) when my lungs started feeling fatigued. My legs felt fine the entire time, so I knew I had the ability to go faster, but my lungs & cardio were struggling in the hot sun. Surprisingly my heartrate didn't go crazy, probably due to me not wanting to push too hard in the heat. I kept myself just below "redline" feeling, and did my best to stay consistent through the entire race.

Splits.

Pace + HR graph

Not sure what that pace blip is right before the half mile mark... 

Anyway, I'm pretty proud of this pacing. Not the best, but I definitely didn't go out insanely fast and then die at the end, so that was positive. 

Anyway, end result was 6:29.... just barely under 6:30, which was my "baseline" goal for this race, though with weather-adjusted considerations, was exactly what I expected. I know I'm faster, I know exactly what the factors were that lead to this result, and I know in different conditions I could have come closer to my goal.

So... looking for fall 1-mile races. :)

Miler Method (Week 7 of 7)

Week Beginning thoughts: 
(well, I left this blank all week... so there's that)

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength

so many numbers

My "bored with lifting routine" last week prompted some research and reading over the past couple of days to see if I can fine-tune some goals and technique. The short answer is "yes", there's definite opportunity to improve on both of those points.

I found a site where I'm going to work on tracking my strength (wish I'd done this years ago, but I guess I'm only now into a really good routine).

StrengthLevel.com

It's pretty cool for a data nerd like me... you enter your workouts (weight, reps, sets) and it ranks you based on the rest of the population from whatever data it has amassed. It'll put you in categories of beginner/novice/intermediate/advanced/elite/etc. based on your strength relative to others of your age & sex. It definitely shows me where I'm "ahead of the curve" vs. not so much, so I know where to focus on building strength.

I also found this article and this article to be interesting - both talk about how much weight + how many reps you should do based on your goals (hypertrophy, strength, or endurance). Since I have different goals for different muscle groups, seems like I should be taking different approaches to different lifts instead of  my "3 sets of 8-10 reps of everything!" approach. Now that I've read that, duh, it makes sense and seems quite obvious...

To summarize a few of the key take-aways of those articles:

Goal:	Reps		Weight*
Hypertrophy (aka bigger muscles)	1-6		85+
Strength	8-12		75
Endurance	15+		<60

*Weight = percentage of your one-rep max. weight for that given lift

The site I linked above is pretty neat in that it will calculate a one-rep max. for your lifting based on any input of weight/reps. So far, here's where I stand (number of stars = relative level of strength for that lift vs. rest of population):

A few of my lifts I had to lower the weight or reduce reps because I've decided that:
> Squats will go at least to (if not below) parallel (thighs parallel to floor or lower)
> Curls need to be done with good form, so no heaving up with lower body. Controlled lift, or lower the weight.
> Really, everything needs to focus on form because if not, I'm just increasing weight for no reason.
> also gauged the weight of the free barbell (finally) to be 12#

Tuesday
Planned: tempo + intervals
10 min WU
2x5 min tempo / 3 min rest
6x30s speed / 90s rest
15 min CD

Did: as-planned + extra to finish 6.21 mi @ 9:23/mi avg
Did this early in the morning around the neighborhood, and as usual, my thoughts of "nnnnoooooooo" when my alarm went off were silenced after the run was done because YAY finished and ready for the day ahead. Since I'm in week 7 of a 6-week plan, I picked a speedwork from last week that looked reasonable for a 10k. Legs were sore to start off after the hard lifting yesterday, so the warmup was much appreciated.
Tempos felt challenging but not super tough, and pace showed that I wasn't really pushing that hard (7:29, 7:27 paces for each).
Worked my way towards a flat-ish place for the 30s repeats and was amazed how easy they felt... I kept trying to push faster since they were over before I really felt the fatigue set in.

Avg Pace vs. Avg Moving Pace... ???

There were definitely a few slow ones (above 6:00/mi) so perhaps the muscle fatigue was holding me back.
Did the cooldown and had to add another half mile at the end to get to 10k.

Wednesday
Planned: Red, White, & Blue Shoes 5k
Did: 5k race, plus 3mi bike to and from the race
Read the race report here.

Thursday
Planned: ?
Did: 14.4 mi bike ride @ 16.5 mph
Solo Sherman College loop at lunch today. Wasn't feeling the ride going into it, but turned out to be a decent ride (usually does) with pretty good speed - 16.5 mph average! Warm but not too warm, and legs finally weren't sore haha.

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: rest

Saturday
Planned: long run (Paris Mtn?)
Did: 6x400m race mile pace
Had some time constraints, so I decided to take the advice of a neighbor who is a former high school track coach and work on my pacing for the track. My goal was simply to do each of the 400s at my goal mile pace (i.e finish them all close to 1:30).

Done and done.

One exciting thing: my watch measures distance around the track pretty well! It gave me a 0.01 mi bonus on a couple of places but overall, pretty spot-on. I was happy that after checking my watch at every 100m for the first couple of laps, I felt good enough to stop looking and just run by feel. Even on that first lap, I didn't have to make any major pace adjustments faster or slower to make my time goal. I pushed harder on the last 2 repeats and was pretty excited by the 1:23 on the fifth repeat.

Track runnin'

I'm not all that hopeful of breaking a 6-minute mile on Tuesday, but I think I should come close. The fact that these 400s felt like all-out efforts was a little discouraging, but hey, we'll see what happens. (It also helped that it was a beautiful and breezy 70F when I did this run... )

Track workout complete!

Sunday
Planned: mountain bike
Did: 15.9 mi @ Dupont
Rode with Waylon (one of my 12 Hours of Tsali teammates) at Dupont this morning, and even though we'd expected a half dozen others to join us, nobody else showed up, so we had a nice duo ride. Got to do a few trails I'd never been on, which was fun, and felt really good for doing a 15+ mile ride with almost 2000ft of climbing. Plusalso, it was 60F when we started riding. SIXTY. In JULY. o_o

Week-ending thoughts: While I'm not all that hopeful about meeting my goal at the race on Tuesday (and I'm hella nervous about running in a track meet for the first time in about 20 years) I've enjoyed this training cycle. It's brought back the bit of focus that I needed in my workouts while still giving me some time to "play". 

Race Report: Red, White, & Blue Shoes 5k

Ughhh ok, first the bitching:
This race perpetually has a problem with an insanely long wait to get your bib on race morning, and then the race tends to start late. The race actually started on time today, but the line was still ridiculous. YES I should have gotten there earlier knowing this was a problem, but still... when you have ONE table of volunteers for a race this size, things are going to move slowly.

Line in front of me... arrow is where the table is.

Line behind me... it wraps around the stadium. 

This was with ~30 mins to go before race start.

I made it through the line in about 20 minutes, missed the team photo, but got to the start line with about 10 minutes to spare. Frustrating, but oh well. I did actually get the size shirt I wanted, which is the first time that's ever happened.

The course was new this year, with a different starting area and a different finish path. Generally I'll say I liked the changes, especially the finish which wraps around the back of the stadium (downhill) before entering the field for the dash to the 50-yard line instead of past years which took you UPhill around the front of the stadium for the same finish.

Anyway, actual race & running talk:

To start off, my legs are SORE today from lifting Monday and speedwork yesterday. I didn't have any plans or goals, just race a good steady race. I didn't do any running warm-ups, but I biked to the race (~3 miles from home) so my legs weren't totally asleep.

I started off and pretty quickly settled into what felt like a good pace. It was comfortably hard, but I was fairly certain I wasn't pushing into PR territory. The course loops through campus and is generally flat. It skips "The Hill" at the back of the lake, but you do have to climb a little right at the start of mile 3 to get up from the lake to the Mall. From there, it's a straight shot down the mall, around the PAC circle, and downhill to the back entrance of the stadium.

Generally I didn't push to "redline" territory but held a steady pace, and my splits showed just that:

Consistent.

'Merica

Not a PR, but solidly back into sub-23 territory, and for a midsummer race in the south, I'm just fine with that. Plus, it was good enough for a 2nd AG finish!

Miler Method (Week 6 of 7)

Week Beginning Thoughts: Uh, maybe this will be a normal week? idk.

Monday
Planned: strength
Did: strength

Felt good today, though a little bored of my routine (again). Deadlifts are feeling easy, so I'll up the weight next time. I want to get more core work in, but I'm still cautious about what to do / what to avoid so as to not undo all the hard work I've put in to "fix" my abs. Maybe I'll try some things next week. I also feel like I want some specific goals to work towards... generally "get stronger / prevent injuries" isn't quite motivating me lately.

Tuesday
Planned: #10kTuesday... with tempo/intervals?
Did: 6.94 mi @ 8:03/mi avg
Yeah, we'll call this a tempo run. Met up with the early downtown crew to run the RU7 route. I thought I might be trotting along with the slower crowd, but ended up hanging with one of the faster guys and chatting for a while... I didn't think I could keep up, but managed to hang on and clocked a 7:14 for mile #5! 0_0 Whew. That was a tough one but felt so good to run fast.

Wednesday
Planned: bike
Did: 15.9 mi @ 16.4 mph
HOT BIKE RIDE. Yup, it's summer. Still, was surprised how well I was able to keep up with Scott & Donnie today, who easily will hit 18-20 mph averages on their lunch rides. Legs are sore from lifting Monday + yesterday's hard run efforts, but felt good to pedal!

Lunch ride

Thursday
Planned: tempo + intervals
10-20 min WU
10 min tempo / 5-10 min rest
4x400 mile pace / 90s rest
10-15 min CD

Did: as planned, 4.81 mi total

I ended up doing this workout at the end of the workday after I got home. I hated to do it at that time, but needed to know what to expect since my "event" is going to be around this time of day & this level of heat.

tl;dr, I'm not overly hopeful of breaking 6 minutes. This is my lowest-energy time of day, I'm usually hungry for dinner by 5:30pm when I get home, and plus it's now the hottest part of the day.

Anyway, I felt alright during the warmup, and even the tempo felt decent though it wasn't all that fast (7:37/mi). I guess that's a sub-10k pace, so not awful, but not as close to 5k (7:00/mi) as I'd like to be.

I walked a lot of the rest period before the 400s, and I even stopped my watch so I could make it to the top of a big hill before starting my repeats. The repeats were flat-ish but did have some slow grades in both directions (I went back and forth along this one stretch of road, which kind of dips in the middle, so I finish on an UP both ways).

400s: 1:30, 1:35, 1:31, 1:38

Ugh. Only one even AT the 6:00/mi, the rest above. Oh well... adjusting expectations is a good thing. And I'm glad to have done this run to know that IT WILL FEEL CRAPPY to run at these paces in this heat at this time of day.

Friday
Planned: yoga
Did: rest

Saturday
Planned: bike or long run
Did: 11.6-ish miles @ 10:something pace avg?
Yeah, I stopped at one point mid-run and forgot to restart my watch, so my true distance & time is a little questionable. I ran from my house over to Furman (2.4 mi) to meet up with Megan, Robin, and Dale for some miles together. Clocked a 8:21 mile for the second mile on the way over, so that was nice to get the heartrate pumping.
Ran together as a group for 30 mins and then Megan & I continued for a few more miles (about 4 total with just Megan, I think). All of these were nice and steady around a 10:00/mi pace.
Parted ways and headed back home, but did not pick up the pace significantly. Apparently missing a long run for several weeks makes it difficult to just pick back up where you left off! Still, was happy with a solid double-digit run in the awful heat.

Sunday
Planned: bike or long run
Did: 26.8 mi road bike ride @ 16.2 mph avg 
Originally planned a mountain bike ride, but for some reason really felt like getting in some road miles. So, after lunch I pedaled out from the house unsure of my plan. There's a nice 15-mile loop that I sometimes do, so I started out on that route, but once I got to the turn-around point, I decided I wasn't ready to be "on my way home" yet, so I continued on a longer version that takes me out through a really pretty cow farm. It felt so nice to just be out riding!

Just me, two wheels, and some country roads.

I could have done more, but was happy with the ride and also surprised at my speed given the fact that I haven't ridden much more than 15 miles at a time in recent months.

Week-ending thoughts:
Not much focus on the actual mile training plan this week, but still felt like a good week where I put in some solid miles and just enjoyed running and biking.