A Slow Start
I kicked off this training cycle with a 3 miler at 12:55 pace (38:45), followed by another 3 miler at 12:31 pace (37:34). Both times I ran some sort of interval, although for the second run, I stuck more faithfully to 5:1 and felt the run went a lot better than the first one.

A Dash of Speed
Thennnnn, came the much dreaded speedwork. I didn’t used to dread it so much until I ran a horrendous 6x800m set a month or so ago and nearly died trying. I had never failed at speedwork before. It’s always been my thang! I’m hoping that after last week’s speedwork, it may be my thang again =) My goal was to hit each repeat at 2:49 with 1 min recoveries in between, and I ended up blowing that out of the water! I logged 2:20, 2:30, 2:21, 2:38. Yeah, baby! Did a mile warm-up (12:47) and a .65 walking/jogging cool down (9:28).

A Toughie
Two days later I tackled a short 2 mile tempo, and I am proud to say that I ran the whole way through! My tempo pace is suppose to be 12:15, but my real goal was to maintain an HR between 165-185 and to keep it in that range for at least 20 minutes. I usually do a 1 mile warm up, but I hit my target HR about half mile in, so I decided to just jump right into it. About 2 miles into the run (half a mile away from wrapping up the tempo portion), I started to feel really tired. My legs felt ok, but my upper body felt like it weighed a thousand tons. I fought the urge to walk and made it all the way through. The run ticked off: .5 warm up (5:58), 2 mile tempo (23:36 avg 11:45 pace – faster than my target pace!!!), then did a 1 mile cool down (14:23).

A First
Today, I did my first trail run. It was fairly short (only 1.5 mi) because I honestly didn’t really know my way around the park and I just wasn’t use to running on that terrain so I did a fair amount of walking and I did a lot of stopping to snap some pics. It was a beautiful day to be out.

I walked up this monster of a hill. It doesn’t look that steep from the pics, but holy bejeezus! That thing burned my butt like crazy. Then, I took one of the side trails to head on over to the lake.

I have my watch set to go off if I’m not in my HR target range. So, it was going off like crazy during the first 1.5 miles of this run because I was mostly walking and stopping to take pics.

I made my way over to the streets where I felt more at home =) I think I’d probably do better if I had trail shoes. I just didn’t feel comfortable in some of the terrain.

Horsie! Two of them actually =) It’s always neat watching people ride their horses around, and it’s a bit of a trip seeing them with a bunch of cars around.

Yeah, horse walking is that common in my neighborhood that they have their own crosswalk button! hehe =) I have a funny picture of me piggybacking on my friend’s back and pressing that button lol Yeah, we were bored and delirious.

So, anyway, the rest of the run was basically uneventful. Splits ticked off 14:02, 17:48, 13:31, 12:55. Ended strong! =)

That’s my training so far. Hoping for a good third week. Hope you guys had a great weekend!

Related posts:

• Week 6: 4×800 Speedwork, 5 mile tempo, Cross-training
• Week 4: Tempo Run
• Week 5: 2x1600m at 11:15
• Week 3: Long Run
• Week 2: Tempo Run