Spring Training

I'm so excited about spring training. We finally decided on a half-marathon for me this spring, the Aquarium Run Half Marathon. We went back and forth trying to decide. Part of what I love about half-marathons is the atmosphere. I enjoy the big races with lots of spectators and plenty of people to run with. The Aquarium Run is a smaller half marathon with little to no spectators. Depending on who shows up on race morning there's a good chance I could be running alone for much, if not all, of the race. My top choice for a spring half-marathon was the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon. It is huge and the atmosphere is amazing. I ran the full back in 2008 and it's impossible to run it without feeling a huge amount of emotion. Along the course there are flags with names of people who lost their lives in the Oklahoma City bombing. It is a very special race. I have wanted to go back and run the half ever since I ran the full there. But the race is the same weekend as the Dylan Meier Get Busy Livin 5k which we have run every year for all 6 years it has been run and I'm not about to miss it now, so the Aquarium Run it is. I figure if I have to run a large portion of the run alone, that's okay, I ran alone from mile 4 to the finish at the Route 66 half anyway.

Starting off 2017 with the Race Into the New Year.

My main goal for 2017 is to make better choices. That means not overbooking myself with playdates and activities with the kids during the day as well as not overbooking myself with races. I'm really focusing on looking at my long term race goals and how different decisions will impact me in the long term rather than just getting excited and signing up for races because they sound like fun. It also means putting a bigger emphasis on getting enough sleep. I've found time and time again that when I get up early to run a hard workout on not enough sleep, it doesn't go well. I'm better off turning off my alarm and going out for the run in the evening after Ty gets home.  I'm also focusing more on recovery and what I can do to help myself in that realm. I have always been pretty lazy about stretching. I would stretch in college because everyone did it together and I was great about taking ice baths. But once I graduated and was running on my own, I stopped stretching and only occasionally took ice baths. My friend Sara was fairly accident prone when we ran together. She was naturally faster than me and I knew if she could just stay healthy, she'd run crazy fast times. She has since remained healthy for multiple seasons in a row and has run huge PRs in almost every race distance. She suggested foam rolling to me and I filed it away in the back of my mind. Then I started having soreness in my left glute that ranged from tight to painful as I ran. I went about a month just rolling on a tennis ball before I broke out a foam roller and, I'm not kidding, the next day was the first run in a month where I had no soreness in my glute! It was amazing. So I'm committing to foam roll after every run. I also just got back into strength training which I hadn't started back up after the half marathon, eek!

My goal for the half-marathon is to run a PR. I was 14 seconds off my PR at the Route 66 which had nearly 400 feet of elevation gain. The Aquarium Run course is extremely flat. I'm thinking an easier course on it's own will get me those 15 seconds plus some. For the Route 66 half I knew there was a possibility I could run a PR but I didn't focus on that because I knew it was a lofty goal. I focused on breaking 1:32 and then the fact that I was so close to a PR was super exciting for me. I didn't go into the race dead set on running a PR and that kept me from being as disappointed that I was so close and didn't quite get there. That's why for the spring I want to focus on chipping off those 15 seconds to run a PR rather than focus on running sub-1:30. I don't want to put a bunch of pressure on myself to run a certain time and be disappointed if I don't quite get there. I'd rather focus on a goal I know for sure I can achieve if I work hard and run a good race. I know there's a chance I can break 1:30 if I have a good race but I don't want to put too much pressure on myself to get there. I want to enjoy this training cycle and finish it with a PR half.

This past week was my first week of official training for the half marathon which will give me 12 weeks of training, including 3 weeks of tapering back at the end of the cycle. I'm getting pretty pumped up about where I am fitness wise, especially in comparison to where I was at this point going into my fall training cycle. I went into training for my fall half with 31 miles as my highest mileage week and my first week of the cycle was 37 miles. Coming into this training cycle my highest mileage week was 45 miles and I finished out the first week with a 50 mile week. I plan to stay at 50 miles for the majority of the cycle, taking a few cut-back weeks when I have races or when my body needs them. I ran my first tempo since the Route 66 half a couple weeks ago. My goal was to hit 6:50 pace as I'm hoping to be around 6:50-6:55 pace for the Aquarium Run half. I totally bombed my tempo, finishing in an average of 7:10 pace. I couldn't figure out where exactly I went wrong. I knew part of it may have been lack of sleep and part of it may have been that I was underdressed. I've always struggled with running bare legged in colder temps and got a hard time about it from my teammates in college. It was upper 30's and I ran the tempo in shorts and it did not go well. The following week the temperature was about the same but I ran that tempo in tights. I finished out a 6 mile tempo in 6:51 pace so I felt fairly confident the shorts may have had something to do with it.

This past week I had a terrible speed workout. I hadn't done speed work in over a month and the speed work I'd done since the half marathon had all been pretty abbreviated, focused mainly on keeping me from losing all of my speed while I gave my legs and mind a bit of a break. I didn't think all that through and just jumped back in with 8x800 repeats with a 1/10th of a mile recovery between. I ran out into a 25 mph wind and just knew I would kill it on the way back with the wind at my back but actually struggled to even maintain pace, running a few of the repeats slower than the first half. I had planned to run a 7 mile tempo a few days later and was a bit leery to do so since I bombed my speedwork so hard. I went out for the run prepared to turn it into an easy 12 mile long run if need be. I think sometimes that helps me not put too much pressure on myself for a tempo run because some of my best tempo runs have been when I was worried I wouldn't be able to complete them. I killed the workout, finishing my 7 mile tempo with an average of 6:47 pace. I took off the last mile hauling because I wanted to make it my fastest mile and the mile before had been 6:42. Toward the end of the mile I looked down to see my pace and I was running 6:10 pace! I was shocked and super excited to see my last mile split was 6:29. Last winter I was stoked to run my last mile of a 5k in 6:27 and here I was running the last mile of a 7 mile tempo in 6:29! Of course I had to look back for comparison's sake and during my fall training cycle I ran an 8 mile tempo run week 2 in 7:21 pace. So my tempo run this past week was an average of 34 seconds per mile faster than what I ran in the fall! I know I could have run another mile at that pace, especially with my last mile not quite as fast. I know I won't improve as much over this training cycle as I did in the fall because I'm coming into the training cycle in better shape than I went into my fall cycle, but if I can even just keep my tempo run pace within 8 seconds of what I ran this week I would be stoked. I am definitely already enjoying this cycle and it's just getting under way. I've really kept my races to a minimum in the spring so I can focus on my training and really do work to my PR. I have a 10k in February at the Sweetheart Run, a 5k in March at the St. Patty's Day 5k, and then the half marathon at the Aquarium Run. It is possible I may add another race into the mix, but it's looking like I will most likely stick with those 3 races with a couple more after the half. I have my sights on a 10k PR of 41:49, a 5k postpartum PR of 19:29, and a half-marathon PR of 1:31:35. We'll see what happens! I'm definitely feeling strong and confident right now. Ty would like for me to add in his current running success, he ran twice in one week this week! That's a huge improvement from running twice in the span of about a month (a race at the Tulsa Run 15k and a race at the Route 66 Half Marathon). Cheers to him! 

There's been lots of cold weather running around here!