On Tuesday, I headed out to the gym for my easy three and strides. I started up the treadmill on a slow walk while I set up my Garmin, like I always do. Except my Garmin was dead. Despite that it had said 60% battery when I checked it at home, it was completely dead. “Oh well,” I thought. “I can still track it with the Nike app.” The Nike app isn’t as accurate, but I’m still not sure how accurate my footpod is either, so I figured it’d be pretty close.

Nope.

Nike was telling me in my ear that I was running 9-10 minute miles (while at 4.8-5.2 on the treadmill), which is just laughable. This threw me off and made the first couple miles frustrating. I was doing 10:2 intervals this week, although I actually did 12 minutes on my first interval because I didn’t want to stop running to a song that I was listening to. By the third mile and third interval, I was more into a rhythm and ignoring my Nike app talking in my ear. Nike said I did 3 miles in a little over half an hour. I ran for 36 minutes, figuring that was closer to the truth.

Since my watch was dead, I had nothing to time my strides with. So I just decided to do a fast mile. Here’s some numbers and math for you: I started the treadmill at 5.0 and increased 0.1 every 30 seconds for the first two minutes. That got me to 5.4. Then I increased 0.1 every 20 seconds for two minutes. By then I was at 6.0. For the next two minutes or so, I increased 0.1 every 15 seconds until I got to 7.0. I held that speed for one minute. Then I decreased 0.2 every 30 seconds down to 6.0 until my mile was complete. One mile in 9:55 according to the treadmill, so effort felt slightly faster.

I had every intention of running this week’s scheduled hill intervals. I also had every intention of actually running with the group. Life said otherwise. My car tire somehow ended up with four spikes in it, so I had to take it in to get a new tire. Then Amanda hit me with the news that she wasn’t going to be running the 15k with me on Saturday (more on that in my upcoming race report). I was feeling a little defeated on Thursday and I didn’t really want to trash my legs before the race, so I ended up just doing a 15 minute tempo run alone. It was 50 degrees outside, so I opted to not go to the gym, which seemed kinda silly for a short workout, so I strapped on my reflective gear and headed into the night.

I considered bailing and not running at all, so I’m glad I pushed myself to do SOME sort of speedwork. It felt fairly hard, maybe even harder than the 20 minute tempo from last week, but then I came across this Runner’s World article about running in the dark that made me feel better. I also didn’t really warm up beforehand (bad runner!), which was evident by the awesome shin splints I felt during the entire run. Luckily, Jonathan cooked a super yummy dinner to make up for the crappy day I had.

I actually came pretty close to not running the 15k on Saturday, which I’ll go into more on my race report, but I’m glad I did because it was awesome. Despite being bitterly cold, I had probably my best race to date. And the race was super well organized and the chocolate at the end was very very yummy. I finished in 1:46:48, which was faster than what I thought would even be my best.

I didn’t have a run scheduled on Sunday because of Saturday’s race, but I went out for a thirty minute recovery run anyway because it was 50 degrees and sunny. The goal was to stay between a 12:30 and 13:00 min pace, which I did. I thought about doing this week’s 10:2 intervals, but I ended up just running the whole thing through. Again, I’m cautiously excited about how well training is going.