I decided to start off the week with an “easy” interval run. I put easy in quotation marks because it should have been but was not. I was doing the same intervals I did in Boise when I ran 6.4 miles. I didn’t plan to necessarily go that far, but just to do some intervals and enjoy myself. It was not in the cards. First, it took me forever to warm up. Actually, I never felt sufficiently warmed up to ever start running, which maybe should have been a clue. Second, despite how “easily” I did these intervals in Boise, I had the three Hs working against me here in Nashville: heat, humidity, and hills. Plus my calf was still sore. And, unlike my past few runs where the soreness went away after warming up, it progressively got more sore until I was limping back to my car. I mentioned last week that I think it’s a soleus strain. It seems to get exacerbated when I wear my Kinvaras (though I would have no idea why they would be different from my other shoes), so I may switch to only wearing my Skechers for awhile (at least for longer distances).
Because of the injury, I took the rest of the week off. I had to second shoot a wedding on Saturday, so I’m hoping that didn’t hurt the muscle too much, since I’m trying to rest it as much as possible. I just ordered The Stick and a foam roller, both of which will hopefully help my eternally tight calves in the future, so I can avoid such injuries. Until then, I get to do this:
Cross your fingers that I’ll be able to run some this week!
Note: I have no idea why Nike+ isn’t showing the pretty green bar for Sunday’s run. It appears as though the totals are correct, though.
I took a rest day on Monday to go check out the new Music City Center. Although it turned out to not be a lot of “rest” because I chose to wear heels and after all that walking, I was pretty sore AND had a blister on my right pinkie toe.
Which is why on Tuesday it was the first day in recent memory that I’ve actually had to force myself to go run. Normally I look forward to it. But I grumbled to myself as I put on my running clothes and headed out the door. Then grumbled through the first half mile. And the entirety of the first mile. Then I got a side cramp because I forgot my water bottle (despite having actually hydrated well all day). I massaged it out as best I could and then for the last half mile, I actually felt good (although sore).
On Wednesday, I was still a little sore, but I went out to the greenway to try to do the next day of Couch to 10k. I am still not used to the humidity. I know that when it’s humid, you are supposed to slow down. Yet I am horrible at being able to slow down once I’ve started on a pace. In fact, I found myself running FASTER than normal (because if I can’t run a 9 minute mile in perfect conditions, why would I be able to when I can’t adequately cool myself down?). You can understand then how I wore myself out before the end of the 25 minutes I was supposed to run and ended up taking quite a few walk breaks. Supposedly it takes two weeks to acclimate to the heat and humidity. We will see.
With this in mind, I waited a little later to go out on Thursday (around 7pm). I was able to get in a good ten minute warm up. I almost started developing a side stitch during my warmup, which made me kind of nervous. It went away when I started the run and came back around 1.5 miles, but it wasn’t the horrible, debilitating stitch I usually get, so I was able to run through it. I believe the cooler weather plus the fact that I was running in a new location helped me to not only finish the 25 minutes without walking, but I went actually beyond to 27:30! I almost pushed myself to do a whole 5k without walking (I think I could have done it…what’s another 6 minutes or so?), but I wanted to do a long run the next day so didn’t want to push too hard. Still, I got my second best time on 2 miles (the best being at the race last Saturday) at 22:01, and I was being pretty consistent with my pacing (although a few times I caught myself trying to go too fast and had to slow down).
Of course, despite my experimentation with going out later, I didn’t learn. On Friday I headed out right after work, and it was hot. I was planning on putting in around four miles by attempting to slightly jump ahead on Couch to 10k to the first day of week 9, just to see how I’d do. This involves four repetitions of running for ten minutes and walking for one. I made it through the first two repetitions without issues, but by the start of the third, I was on a stretch of the greenway out in the hot sun. And I was out of water. And sore. So I walked way more than I should through the third repetition and didn’t even finish the fourth, choosing to stop after I’d achieved 3.5 miles. My right calf was super sore, so I decided to go home and ice it and take Saturday off for a rest day.
I thought the rest did me well until I started my run on Sunday. My warm up was horrible, just as it’s been for the past few runs. I started getting a side stitch and my right calf was sore again. But after I finished warming up, it went amazing. I was supposed to run 25 minutes without walking, and I ended up doing 30! I paced really well too, coming about a minute per mile down on each split (~12:30 on my first mile, 11:30 on my second, and 10:30 on the last 0.6). Go me!
I tried to take it fairly easy this week, since Saturday was a race day.
I was pretty sore from the previous day’s fartlek session on Monday, but I headed out to attempt to complete day 3 of week 6 of Couch to 10k. According to the description on the app, this meant I was going to have to run for 20 minutes with no walk breaks (*gulp*). I’ve done this once before on day 3 of week 5, but considering week 7 consists all of 25 minute runs, this time it meant something. My legs weren’t feeling great starting out, and I wasn’t really into it. I chugged through the first half mile kind of grumbling to myself. But after mile one, I started to feel really good. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I could actually go a little longer than 20 minutes. Maybe I could finish the whole second mile.” As it turned out, I could. And I had to, because the day’s description had lied, and I was actually meant to run 22 minutes. So I did 2 miles in about 22:25, a personal best, and almost a full minute off my 2 mile PR time from the day before. Now if I could keep up that time for the 5k on Saturday, I could blow my PR out of the water!
Wednesday was a different story. It was a hot day and as soon as I started running, I knew it wasn’t going to be a repeat of Monday. My muscles ached and felt terribly stiff. I suffered through the first mile, walking quite a bit. The second mile was better, but I decided to go home, stretch, and rest my legs before the race on Saturday.
I took Thursday and Friday off from running to make sure I was fully rested for race day. I detailed the Law Enforcement Memorial 5k yesterday, but if you didn’t read it, I will sum up by saying I broke all the records.
Sunday, I went for an “easy” two mile run, completing week 7, day 1 of Couch to 10k. I had spent the previous night at my friend Amanda’s house, which is between Smyrna and Murfreesboro, so I went to the Smyrna greenway for this run. It was fairly flat, which was nice, but it was so HUMID. I actually found a gnat that had drowned in the sweat on the back of my neck after my run was finished. I guess I’m going to have to get used to the humidity though; summer hasn’t even officially started yet, and I’m due to run a 10k on July 4th!
On Monday, I had the urge to try to break my mile PR. (Nike+ says my mile PR is 9:45, but that’s actually a lie. The GPS just wasn’t registering properly that day, and my actual PR was 10:26.) However, it was 45 degrees outside and, right as I stepped out of my house, began to rain. I’ve never really run in the rain before, always opting for the treadmill when the weather goes bad, but I just really wanted to run, so I did it anyway. I started off at a slow 12:00 min/mile and progressively got faster, up to around a 9:20 min/mile (which is practically flying to me). I ended up not beating my PR, though, coming in just two seconds short! Blame it on the rain.
The next day, I attempted day 1 of week 6 of Couch to 10k, but it did not turn out too well. About halfway through the middle 8 minute run (about a mile and a half in), I got a terrible side stitch and couldn’t continue. I pushed a little further, but ultimately decided it wasn’t happening that day and called it quits.
On Wednesday, I headed out to attempt it again. And again, I got a side stitch about a mile and a half in. I pushed through and finished the 8 minute jogging section before taking a detour to my car for my water bottle. I’m fairly certain all of my side stitches come from dehydration, and I need to remember to carry that thing with me all the time. I just hate holding things when I run. After I hydrated, I got back on track and managed to run another 8 minutes, instead of the 5 I was supposed to. Then I did some sprinting intervals, doing a 30 second sprint, followed by a 1 minute walk. After five of those, I was pretty beat, so I switched to jogging for 90 seconds and walking for 30 until I felt I had run enough and called it a day.
Thursday was the hottest day I have run so far this year. 83 degrees and partly cloudy (not the part I was running in, though; it was all sun with some trees for shade). However, I somehow pushed through the heat to complete day 2 of week 6. This consisted of 10 minutes jogging, a 3 minute walking recovery, and 10 more minutes of jogging. Ugh! I wanted to stop so bad about 3 minutes before the end of the second jogging session; I was feeling kind of nauseated (maybe I drank too much water too fast trying to keep from getting a side stitch, who knows). But I pushed myself and finished it. Too bad because now all my Couch to 10k runs until week 9 include no walking! I managed a 12:17 average pace, with the fastest mile being my second at 11:44.
Friday I received my second pair of running shoes, the Saucony Kinvara 3 (I’ll write more on them later), but I didn’t get a chance to try them out until Saturday. I only did slightly over a mile because (a) they were new shoes and (b) I was second shooting a wedding later that day and didn’t want to be exhausted. However, I did manage to PR, doing a mile in 10:15! Probably due to excitement of new shoes and the fact that the weather wasn’t bad (mid-60s and overcast). But yay!
On Sunday, I donned my usual Skechers for my weekly long run. With the 5k coming up in less than a week, I didn’t want to do too long a run, so for the first part I did a mock 5k. I did Galloway intervals of 3:30 running and 1:00 walking, but tired myself out too quickly, so I may lower the running time for the actual 5k, although it was mostly due to me not pacing well and running too fast, as I am prone to do. However, despite my ill pacing and exhaustion, I still managed to knock nearly three minutes off my previous 5k best and PR at 36:47! Now there’s even more pressure to beat my best time. For the second part of my Sunday training, I did a mile of fartleks. Don’t laugh. They are basically unstructured speed intervals. I always feel like Phoebe when I do them, but they are fun way to increase speed.
So two PRs this week makes me super happy. I only hope that I can keep that up!
I was on a business trip to Boise, Idaho, last week, so I didn’t have a lot of days I could run.
I managed to squeak in almost 3.5 miles on Monday morning before the conference got started. This involved me doing both days 1 and 2 of week 5 of Couch to 10k. I averaged 13:04 min/mile, which is slow to average for me. My best mile was mile 1 at 12:49 min/mile.
Tuesday and Wednesday I was too busy with the conference to even fit in time for a mile run, but Thursday before I flew back to Nashville, I did a long run of nearly 6.4 miles along Boise’s Greenbelt (which is beautiful). I did intervals of 2:30 jogging, 1:00 walking the entire time, with just two slightly extra longer walk breaks around 2.5 and 4.5 miles. I averaged 12:48 min/mile. Mile 5, amazingly, was my best, coming in at 12:01 min/mile. I usually am exhausted by the end of my long runs, but I felt great after this one! I set my 10k training PR (although only my second 10k+ run) at 1:19:22.
On Sunday, I did Couch to 10k week 5 day 3, which consisted of 2.5 miles and an average pace of 12:47. My best mile was my second at 12:19 min/mile.
Progressive Runner 