Life Lately and St. Louis Go! Half Marathon Training Week 5

Hi, everyone! How was your weekend? Now that spring is finally here, I hope everyone is getting some great outdoor runs! 

Life Lately

I feel like the weeks have been going by quickly lately, but that’s probably because the days don’t drag by now that we can spend our evenings outside. I’m loving this warmer weather! Monday I ran in a tank top and shorts—it was glorious! 

Tuesday we went out for a couple Guinnesses for St. Patrick’s Day. I forget until St. Patty’s Day each year how much I love this beer. The bar we went to is at the restaurant where we had part of our wedding reception and it’s always fun to go back there! 

This week we binge-watched Broadchurch on Netflix. Such a good show! Two things: I need to live by a coast, and I seriously miss David Tennant as Dr. Who (and Matt Smith, for that matter, this recent season just wasn’t as good). 

Friday we watched our alma mater, Valparaiso University, play in March Madness. It seems like everywhere that we make it to March Madness, our first game is against some Big Ten school and we lose. This game was close, but Valpo lost in the end, which was a bit of a disappointment. My graduate school, University of Dayton, is still in the running, so we’ll see how they do. Charlie, meanwhile, snuggled on our his Valpo blanket and was not impressed by the game.

I’m trying to be creative with our Friday meals this Lent, so I made bean burgers and whole wheat buns both from scratch on Friday night. We had sweet potato fries on the side and topped our burgers with spinach and avocado. OMG sooooo good! I’m working on an e-book of recipes and am going to include the recipes! Definitely a meal worth repeating, and it felt so good to eat lots of plant-based goodness after my long run earlier that day. (Sorry for the poor photo quality, our apartment does not have the best lighting at night).

Saturday we were going to go on a trail run but it was incredibly muddy still from all the snow melting, so we instead took Charlie on a nice long (and muddy) hike. Charlie loves the outdoors just as much as Ryan and I do, which makes me so happy. We’re sure going to miss this park if/when we move, since we went on one of our first dates there. It’s easy to get sentimental about a place when prospects for moving start looking up. We just need to remember that Seattle/Portland/wherever we end up will have just as beautiful (if not more beautiful!) parks. 

St. Louis Go! Half Marathon Training Week 5

Other than Monday’s workout, which I’ll get to soon, I had a great week of running this week. I wanted to get more miles in, but since I had a few hard workouts, I feel like I hit a decent balance of volume and intensity. My right ankle is feeling a little sensitive, and I don’t want to push myself to injury, so this coming week I’m going to focus more on volume and one strong workout since it’s speedwork like mile repeats or faster that aggravate sore spots for me. I know my ankle is fine, but I always get overly cautious as I get closer to a race! 

Monday: 8 miles, 8:04/mile average pace, with 6 x 800m. I was planning on running mile repeats, so I did a warm-up run to a park nearby that has a paved loop that’s perfect for doing intervals. I get to the park and half of the loop is closed for maintenance and only about 0.4 of a mile was open! I decided to do 1/2 mile repeats instead, but having to turn a complete 180 degree turn in the middle of each repeat seriously slowed me down. The loop was also extra crowded, so there was a lot of dodging people. Needless to say, the turning and dodging gave me less than stellar times for my repeats: 3:34, 3:29, 3:35, 3:34, 3:30, 3:33. 
Later in the day I did this core workout plus some upper body weights.

Tuesday: 7 miles easy on the treadmill, 8:53/mile, with 0.5-4% incline, plus 25 minutes of Pilates.

Wednesday: 9 miles with 7 miles at goal half marathon pace, 7:45/mile average pace. This workout was hard, as it should be—half marathon pace shouldn’t feel easy in training! It didn’t help that it was windy outside, but running against the wind only makes me stronger for race day! My tempo splits were great and made me feel confident about the race: 7:26, 7:33, 7:31, 7:30, 7:32, 7:34, 7:30. Afterwards, I did about 5 or 10 minutes of foam rolling.

Thursday: 4 miles recovery run with Charlie on a route with some nice gentle hills. Slight hills always feel better to me than perfectly flat. We kept a 9:06/mile average pace and this was Charlie’s longest run in a while! Ryan and I are proud of our little runner puggle.

Friday: 12 mile long run, 8:23/mile average pace. It was less than ideal conditions—about 96% humidity when I left—but still a great long run. I threw in a fast finish and my last mile was in 7:27! 

Saturday: About 75 minutes of hiking with Ryan and Charlie. 

40 miles total for the week.  

Goals for Next Week

1. Hit at least 45 miles for the week. I’m really craving some more mileage before I begin to taper. Since taper starts halfway through week 7 of training, now’s the time to add in more miles!

2. Add in a session of yoga. I’ve really been preferring Pilates lately, but I could use some recovery yoga to loosen up my joints a bit more. 

3. More squats and lunges! I meant to do strength training on Saturday but wasn’t feeling it after our hike. The Go! Half Marathon course has some serious downhill portions, and I don’t want those to wreck my quads. 

Questions of the Day:
Which is harder for you in training: shorter speed work or tempo runs? —–> Speed work is always so hard for me, as I like tempo runs and feel like I really benefit from them! 
Did you race this weekend? How did you do?
Do you have any upcoming races?