Sickness in the house

Monday
Did: 60 min Soul Sculpt class
On my last day of my unlimited 1-month pass at Soul Yoga I decided to do one of the sculpt classes, which have always intimidated me. Spoiler alert: I was right to be intimidated! First of all, this was NOT a yoga class. Like, not even close. It's a plyo/strength class with loud music, weights, squats (so many squats), resistance bands, and a few yoga poses thrown in. It was HARD. I'm glad I did it but I'm not sure I'd make a regular habit of it. I like strength training at my own pace and I prefer to not incorporate cardio into it... I do enough cardio on my own. But yeah, I was a puddle by the end because oh yeah it's still held in a 95F studio.

Tuesday
Did: 6.73 mi @ 8:28/mi avg
Dodged the rain (kind of) to do some track work this morning. My plan was to do a 3k indicator run to help with my 5k training plan, then do a few shorter intervals with whatever time I had left. Seven and a half laps... that was 3000 m. We ran from the cars to the track, and then I set off, counting off half-laps. I had a little mental roadbump when I got to 3.5 laps done and realized I wasn't halfway yet... but magically after that, the rest of it flew by and I didn't struggle through 6... 6.5...7....7.5 as much as I anticipated, which tells me I wasn't pushing hard enough.
My Garmin says I ran a 7:02 pace, but ran a little over 3100 m (I was running in Lane 3 the whole time so it should have been accurately 3000m).  Based on my time assuming the distance was correct, it was more like a 7:17/mi pace which is what it felt like. Either way, I think I'll use my 22:14 5k time from Greenville News to judge my pacing for future work.

We got rained on.

Wednesday
Did: nada
Stayed home with a sick little one today, so did not get in any workout.

Thursday
Did: 40 min stationary bike
Was about to scrap this workout but decided to go for it and I'm glad I did. It wasn't much but it was something.


Friday
Did: 4.90 mi @ 8:05/mi avg
Wow, what a run!! Sunshine, perfectly chilly temperatures, feeling very "in the zone" all made for a great lunchtime run at work today. Maybe it's this TED Talk that my runner mama friend shared that just added a bit of clarity to things today.

Saturday
Did: 8.45 mi @ 9:39/mi avg
Today there was a special event at a county park less than a mile from my house where they were hosting a 5k "drop-in" trial run of some trails at the park. They're not new, but I guess they've done some work on them and are trying to get more folks out there since it's a pretty under-utilized park. It's primarily an equestrian park (there are stables and show rings for jumping, etc) but there's a nice set of a few miles worth of trails through the woods nearby. I'd been on them on a bike once or twice many years ago but hadn't explored them since then. I took this opportunity to try out a couple of loops and ended up meeting a bunch of runner friends just by chance. It was a fun loop and I didn't even realize I'd run over 8 miles by the time I got home! I'll look forward to using these trails more often.

I also realized this was the first time I'd been on trails (other than the cross-country course at work) since my 50k, and I quite enjoyed the freedom of running through the woods, even briefly. :)

Sunday
Did: 6.1 mi @ 8:51/mi avg + 60 min yoga
A few of the runners I happened to see on Saturday invited me to their group run on Sunday morning. I took the opportunity to bring D out in the stroller and run 6 miles with them on the Swamp Rabbit trail. I realized how much I missed stroller running, too! It's been a year since my stroller marathon training and I love the feeling of clicking off miles on the trail with my buddy. Was also nice to run with friends I haven't seen in a while.

💙

Afterwards, I met up with Scott at Red's (a local craft beer & wine taproom) for Sunday afternoon yoga. It was a nice easy class, lots of relaxation/breathing.


What could have been a disaster of a week turned out to be not so bad on the exercise front... magically I stayed healthy despite the flu in the household, and only had one rest day which is as it should be anyway. Got in 4 days of running (total of just over 26 miles for the week!) which hasn't happened in a good while and feel awesome because of it. Let's keep this going...

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Monday
Did: 20 min strength + 1.28 mi run
Did some lifting in the afternoon but decided I really wanted to go outside and run, so I did. Just a quick one because of a meeting, but it was good to get some fresh air in the last day of non-rain for the week. So tired of rain.

Tuesday
Did: 6.2 mi treadmill @ 8:46/mi
2 mile warm-up + 3 mile progression, followed by cooldown. Was not feeling it this morning and I think I'm getting sick.

Definitely a progression. 

Wednesday
Did: 4.22 mi @ 8:25/mi
Took the break in the rain to get outside and run. Just a quick dash through campus, but stayed away from the dirt trails due to MUD. I'm still not feeling 100% but it's all drainage/throat stuff so it isn't affecting breathing or anything. Plus I slept 9 hours last night. 🎉

Thursday
Did: core + 40 min stationary bike
Started out with a core routine posted by my trainer friend on her Instagram. Then did 40 mins of intervals on the stationary bike. Worked up a good sweat (as always) and kind of wish I'd brought my bike since it decided to stop raining earlier than planned. Oh well.

Friday
Did: rest (planned)
Rest day!

Saturday
Did: rest (unplanned)
A little too much fun Friday night made for a totally useless day Saturday.

Sunday
Did: 6.97 mi @ 9:30/mi
Ran a piece of the Green Valley route at a casual pace. Intended to go to yoga this afternoon but a sick child caused those plans to be cancelled.

Well the first part of the week looked promising then everything fell off the rails.

Making some plans - 5k & 8k

Ok, I've been looking at my race PR list and I see a couple that just NEED to go.

PRs should not stand for 5+ years and it's time to make some concerted efforts for those to be replaced. I keep making excuses for why I'm not going for PRs and it's time to stop.

The 5k should be one I can knock off this year because there's, like, a 5k race every weekend in this area. Right now I'm targeting the Zoom through the Zoo 5k in early May as my goal race, but there are a few others that I can go for after that if things don't pan out.

It's a pretty flat course except for the hilly loop through the zoo at the end (of course). I ran a 21:44 last year, though the course was short and I'll have to keep a close eye on that this year - run extra through the finish line if I have to. I also read my report from 2018 and my notes stated it was NOT a PR course... so maybe we'll see. At least it'll be a good benchmark.

Anyway, I'm looking at this 8-week program from Hal Higdon (my fave training plans).

His description for this Advanced plan indicates it is for people already running "4-5 days a week, 20-30 miles a week or more". Yeah... so I'll be spending the next month working back up to that. I think instead of the Wednesday rest or easy run I'll be substituting some cross-training or strength training, as usual.

After this I want to tackle the 8k, but there are really only two in the area: Sunrise Run (early June) and the Turkey Trot 8k (Thanksgiving). If things go well in May I'll probably look to PR at the Sunrise run, but it's a HOT and hilly course... I've consistently run ~37 mins in the past few years, so maybe I can find a way to shave 3 mins off. Woof.

And after all that, maybe I'll run a fall marathon. 😏🙈

Tornadoes and such.

Monday
Did: 4.64 mi trail run
It was too beautiful of a day to do anything indoors, so I took to the trails at lunch and it was perfection in the sunshine. Pace was solid, felt good (although my upper left hamstring has been giving me issues for a few days...), and still could have soaked up a few more hours of sunshine and been quite happy with that.

Tuesday
Did: 6.43 mi @ 8:37/mi avg
Track Tuesday! Had two others along for the ride this morning, and man it was gorgeous. So quiet with the cloud cover and warm (for February) temps. I ran in shorts and a long sleeve tech shirt, but didn't need the sleeves. I ran 8x400m repeats, all were between 1:30-1:40 so at least pretty consistent.

Wednesday
Did: rest
My legs have been sore for days so, despite not wanting to rest in the midst of a day (week) full of sitting in meetings, I think I need it. Will at least walk around between sessions and maybe see my desk today. Maybe.

Thursday
Did: rest again
Ugh just... meetings, giving a presentation, rain... just nope. Oh and also tornadoes!

Friday
Did: rest, why not?
I even brought my workout bag to work, intending to get back into the routine, and just... didn't.

Saturday
Did: 10.06 mi @ 8:55/mi
YESSSS. This was great and needed. The Green Valley Road Race was scheduled for this morning, but I'd decided I wanted to be done with my run earlier than doing the race would allow... so what did I do? I basically ran the race course, starting & ending at my house since the course goes RIGHT through my neighborhood. I changed some of it because it crosses major highways and I didn't have the luxury of police stopping traffic for me, but I did cross paths with the 5 mile race for about half a mile. I felt good through the run and really liked getting in double-digits... it's been a hot minute since I've done that.

Post-run coffee

Sunday
Did: 60 min power flow yoga
Yay finally got to a yoga class this week! Really loving this Sunday afternoon class. The teacher is challenging but not so much that you feel like it's impossible. Whew!

Finishing out January

Monday
Did: 60 min Power Flow yoga
Did the early morning class, and again loved starting the week with this!

Tuesday
Did: 6.43 mi @ 8:51/mi avg
Track Tuesday with friends! I had this grand idea of doing some sort of workout in celebration of my 35th birthday today... at first I planned 3x3x500m but didn't think I'd have enough time to get that many repeats... so I thought, ok, I'll just do repeats to get 3500m of speed intervals... and in the early morning hours that worked out to 7x300m... yeah, not even close. 🙈 I finished the 7th one and was like... wait a minute... oh well. It was a nice thought. Haven't done short intervals in a while, though, so it was still a good workout! Each repeat was between 1:05-1:10 (maybe one was 1:11). Anyway, need to remember to check my 4:30am math better in the future. 😂

Wednesday
Did: 60 min Power Flow yoga
Working from home today so took the opportunity to do a yoga class at lunchtime. It was a great class! I really liked the teacher (Karina) who I'd had once before. Challenging class, pretty fast paced, but I felt like I could handle it.

Thursday
Did: rest
Planned this as a rest day due simply to the fact that my work day was packed start to finish and Scott is out of town, so I couldn't easily do anything before/after.

Friday
Did: 5.0 miles treadmill, 3x1mi repeats
I did not want to do this today, but I felt great once I finished! I told myself to get through 2 repeats and I could stop if I wanted to... but of course by that point, I knew I could do JUST ONE MORE. So I did. Yay!

Saturday
Did: 7.6 mi mountain bike
Was just not feeling it this morning, and was very tentative on a lot of the technical parts that I usually have no problem with. It was nice out and I wish I'd been more "with it".

Sunday
Did: 1 mi running after D on his bike + 60 min power flow yoga
Chased D on his bike through the neighborhood for about a mile, then I went to Power Flow 60 in the afternoon. It was a great class - really like this teacher & time.