Countdown to Ultra Training (5 weeks to go)

Monday
Did: short lift
Got down to the gym late in the afternoon so didn't have much time. Still got in a decent enough lift that I'm sore today (Tuesday) as I'm writing this.

Tuesday
Did: 6.25 mi @ 8:37/mi
"Slow" run for me but felt hard... heat and humidity probably had something to do with it. Ran with the early group downtown, "Wave at the Hills" route. Fastest mile was "only" an 8:16/mi. Glad to get this one done before the heat of the day, though!

Wednesday
Did: rest

Thursday
Did: 40.8 mi road bike ride
At the Lake for the long holiday weekend, Scott and I brought our road bikes and headed out for what we planned to be a ~35 mi ride on Thursday morning.

Our route ended up at a lovely "Pavement Ends" sign and gravel ahead of us... so we were forced to re-route and go a different direction.

  

Luckily we found our way back to the original route and only added about 5 miles to the total ride. This is my longest ride in quite a while (looking at Garmin records last ride this long was in Montreal a year ago) and I was happy it didn't feel too hard. Definitely tired but manageable.

Friday
Did: 5.07 mi @ 8:43/mi
Did an early morning run with Scott, just an out-and-back on Lake Road. It was disgustingly humid! I could tell on the uphills that my legs were tired from the day before but not as bad as I thought they'd be.

Saturday
Did: 9.02 mi @ 9:35/mi
My long run wasn't quite as long as I'd wanted it to be, but considering the terrain and the hard efforts of the previous couple of days, I decided 9 was good enough. Ran the entire loop of the Rolling Hills neighborhood, pretty quiet and a few nice views of the lake.

Winding country roads

Sunday
Did: 3.2 mi @ 9:49/mi w/ 8x hill repeats
Opted for a short run but did hill repeats on the hill right outside the lakehouse driveway. It rises about 50' in 0.05 miles, which doesn't sound like much, but sure feels like it when you're trying to sprint up it. I kept all my splits around 27-28 seconds, then pushed on the eighth and final one and got it under 25 seconds (24.1s to be exact).


Week-ending thoughts: Pretty happy with the consistent effort over the holiday weekend. Still missing that double-digit run and didn't get anything on trail, but overall a solid week.