Week Two of Training

Week two of training for the Brisbane Twilight half is done! (well it was done yesterday, but I was too lazy to blog until today. Thank goodness it's been raining ALL DAY and I have no excuse not to catch up on blogging).

Overall, this week was challenging but also is making me really excited because I'm feeling strong. I'm pretty keen (what up Australian word) to see how much I can improve if I stick to the plan for the next 8 weeks.

Here's how I went. I didn't take pictures every day of the treadmill like last week as I thought that would get a bit boring, so you only have one bright red face to gaze upon. I'll try to make up for it with more creepy selfies this week.

Tuesday: 4 x 800s at a 7:32 pace. These KILLED me. I guess that's the point, right? I am trying to do a warm up (usually anywhere from 1/2 mile to mile) and cool down, but after these 4 intervals I was spent and just walked for five minutes. I can't believe most "good" runners can average that pace for an entire race!

Wednesday: 4 mile tempo run at an 8:27 pace. This was a pretty good run- I had to stop a little over half way through for a bathroom stop, but I felt strong up until about the last half mile. I again managed to do a warm up, but just walked at the end (and then had to walk nearly 2 miles home after)

Sunday: 8 mile long run. I was going to do this outside, but when I woke up and it was raining decided to be lazy and run on the treadmill. My gym is about a 1/2 mile walk away, but when I got there there was no power. Another 1/2 mile walk brought me to a further location, and 2 episodes of Modern Family and 1 of The Mindy Project helped me get through the miles.



I did one episode at a 9:05 pace, the next episode at a 8:57 pace and the final episode at a 8:44 pace. At that point I still had about 7 minutes left, so I bumped it up to a 8:34 pace to finish. I'll need to run the overall race a bit quicker than where I finished this run, so I definitely have some work to do-- but again I felt strong the entire run and felt like I had gas leftover in the tank after.

Or maybe it was just the promise of a butter toasted piece of banana bread when I finished that got me through ;)

I'm trying to put a lot of effort into preventative care as I train for this race- forcing myself to ice if I feel any aches, trying to do yoga 1-2 times a week, and doing a lot of this:



Yep, that's me, foam rolling and watching Glee. In my pajamas. Don't judge. Also, if you really want to have some fun, use a tennis ball to help get knots worked out. For me this means sitting on a tennis ball and rolling it around my hip/butt -- super painful, but feels amazing if you can grit your teeth for a bit.

This week I've got mile repeats on the docket and 10 miles for the weekend-getting serious!
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