Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Training Tuesday: October in Review

I'll start with a recap of this week, and then get onto the review of the entire month of October.

Monday: Rest (actual: 1.50 @ 8:37 pace)
I often take a rest day on Monday, since it's the day after my long run, but I was feeling ready to run, so I went out for a short, quick one. I felt good (even though it was short!), so it was a confidence booster. :)

Tuesday: Run 3-4 miles at HM pace (actual: 3.1 @ 8:52)
It rained for the entire day on Tuesday, so i was worried that I wouldn't get a run in, but around 10 pm, I decided I was just going to go ahead and run in the rain. It was a decent temp, about 52 degrees, but dark and steadily raining. I put on my insanely bright LED vest, a jacket, a hat, and off I went. I originally told myself that I could stop after a mile, but I felt good, and it was actually quite refreshing to run in the rain, so I ended up doing 5k.

Wednesday: Rest
It rained again on Wednesday, so this time I gave in and took a rest day. :)

Thursday: Easy 4 (actual: 4.03 @ 9:26 pace)
This run felt very hard, which was frustrating. It was rather cold, and I was feeling pretty wimpy, so I wore pants. I knew this was a bad idea because I always get hot when I'm running, but it was the only way I was getting out the door. About 2 miles into the run, I was SO hot. I was able to finish it out, but I confirmed that I should not wear pants while running if it's above 40 degrees.

Friday: Easy 4 1 mile run (1 mile with dog @ 8:34)
I was not excited about running today, so I just decided to do a quick run with my dog, then call it a day. Luckily, she's speedy, so I could at least consider it speed work. :)

Saturday: 12 miles 6 miles (6 miles @ 9:16 pace)
I decided to do my long run on Saturday morning instead of Sunday because I was going to a wedding, so I had 12 miles on the schedule. Unfortunately, I was up late on Friday getting some research work finished up, and we had to be ready to leave for the wedding by 11, so I only had time for 6 miles. It felt ok, but not great.

Sunday: 6 miles
I planned to run 6 miles today so that I at least got 12 miles in over the weekend. After sleeping in a little bit (in addition to the extra hour due to the time change!), we went to brunch with friends who also had been at the wedding. This ended up taking a really long time, and then we had to stop at my parents house to get the dog on the way home--by the time we got home it was already dark, and I had to try to get some stuff done. I decided to skip the run for the day. :-|

Total Mileage: 15.89 :(

I was hoping to have another 25 mile week this week, but I definitely fell short. :( I know it doesn't matter too much in terms of my fitness for the half this Saturday, but I'm still disappointed.

October Recap
I am so bummed about this, but I didn't get 100 miles for the month! If I had been able to do my 12 mile run on Saturday, I would have gotten it, but instead I had a total 95.56 miles for the month. I'm still rather happy with this, but it's disappointing to be so close to getting 100 miles in for 2 months in a row. I am feeling pretty good with a September total of 94.57 and then an October total of 95.56. This is much higher mileage than I have hit in the past and I hope that it shows during my half this weekend! 

Speaking of my upcoming half, these are my goals:
A: sub 2:00: I want to be able to hit this goal, but I'm not sure if I can. I have done several short runs (3-5 miles) in the past few weeks at this pace, and it has felt rather hard. I am hoping race day adrenaline carries me though, but we will see. 
B: < 2:04:27 (< 9:30 pace): I have done all of my long runs at 9:30-9:40 pace, so my secondary goal for the half is to run faster than a 9:30 pace. 
C: PR with < 2:07:26: I don't think that I should have too much of a problem at least getting a PR for this race since I have trained much better than I ever had in the past.