weekly update #10

I spent most of Monday with CNN on in the background while I worked.  If you live anywhere along the east coast or in the north east, I hope you are safe, dry, and with power!  (Although, I guess if you are reading this, you probably have power).  The vast majority of my friends/family live in the states that had flooding and power outages... so I was definitely tracking Sandy and checking in with everyone to make sure they were all safe.  What a crazy storm!  And poor Susan had to be at work... send her some love if you get a chance!

Anyway, this past week was my LAST full week of training before the Raleigh half marathon.  It's crazy how that snuck up on me!  I'm pretty excited.  It's been a LONG time since I've done a race - over 6 months!

Training for this race been up and down.... a lot of random pains/soreness, but no specific injury to pinpoint.  I had a revelation on my run on Wednesday.  I need to slow down when I'm not doing speed work. I realized that a lot of my easy and long runs start off really slow, get into a nice pace, and then continue to speed up to a pretty challenging pace.  Easy right now is 10:30 for me, maybe closer to 10:00 on a good day - but often my 'easy' runs include 9:00-9:30 miles (and then also some 11:00 miles).  I think I need to aim for a more consistent, smooth, easy pace on my easy days so that my legs don't get worn down quite so much.  And then, when the plan is speed, I should be rested enough to really push.  Okay, I know that isn't rocket science or anything but it felt really important to share with y'all.   I'm hoping that deliberately slowing down some of my runs will result in fewer aches and pains for me.

I added in an extra run this past week and signed up for the Durham Monster Dash.  It wasn't all that well organized, but it was really fun!  Monsters and zombies hid along the 3 mile route and scared runners.  If you had a "tail" (which you could purchase for $5) they would also chase you and try to steal your tail.  Pretty fun!  Since this was a small run with limited route markings, we tried to keep with the pace of other runners without pushing ourselves, and I think our avg. pace was around 10:08.

Yes.  Zombies chased us.  It was awesome.  Anyway - my last long run was Saturday morning, and luckily M and I managed to dodge the rain.  Both of our watches were acting up (maybe a satellite was down) so my Garmin said that I had run a mile after 4:14 and about 0.4 miles.... no.  After that, the watch seemed to "find" where it really was and every mile was more accurate, I think.  My mile splits (other than the 4:14) were between 10:30 and 11:30, which is what we we were aiming for, so hooray for staying on pace!  The first 2-3 miles was pretty painful (I was feeling lazy) but after we were warmed up it was mostly smooth sailing!

recap of workouts:
Mon. 10/23: 3.13 easy miles, avg. pace 10:20.  I tried to keep an "easy" pace, but let me tell you, this run was hard to get through.  Ah well, not every day is sunshine and roses.
Tues. 10/24: spin class + strength
Wed. 10/25: 3.7 easy miles, avg. pace 10:54 - this run was much more enjoyable/managable
Thurs. 10/26: 3 mile speed work with 2 800s at 8:13 and 8:24 pace - hard, but good
Fri. 10/27: 3ish (2.88?) mile Monster Dash fun run
Sat. 10/28: long run -10ish miles, 10:30/11:00ish pace.  my garmin messed up so i don't know the exact numbers, haha
Sun. 10/29: strength training! twice in one week (barely)