Running Update

Running lately has been so much fun! Once I let go of the expectations for my fall season and just let myself run and enjoy myself, it has been wonderful! I've been able to follow my long run plan exactly as I had hoped and am up to 18 miles! My 14 mile run was hot and humid so it was harder than it should have been, but not too bad. Then my 16 mile run was perfect weather and I felt great, running 40 seconds per mile faster than the week before. Yesterday was my 18 mile run and it ended up being rough toward the end, I think mostly due to the heat and humidity. I really lucked out because I had someone to run with for almost every mile of the run. I joined a Mom's Run This Town group on Facebook in the winter hoping to find training partners with no luck. A few weeks ago I met Alicia who I have been running with on Fridays and we may add more days as our schedules line up better. She had 10 miles as her long run this weekend and offered to run the first 10 miles of my run with me. My brother, Thomas, is training for the half-marathon at Route 66 so he's been doing the end of my runs with me. That worked out perfectly! The heat and humidity got to Alicia and she had to send me on at 8 miles. She ended up run/walking the remaining 2 miles of her run. I felt like that was a bad sign for me and told Thomas the last few miles of my run may be a struggle and the final 3 miles were rough, but I got through them. I was so thankful to have Thomas there with me for those miles! My friend, Sara, says you have a bad long run during every training cycle and this past weekend was a rough one so I'm hoping it's the only one I have. It probably didn't help that I planned the run to be hilly for the final 8 miles. On a good or even decent day it would have been fine but on an off-day it was pretty brutal. I'm just so thankful that through all the long runs I have had no shin pain at all, not even after finishing or later in the day. I've been wearing compression socks all day following a long run and I think that helps. I'm so excited to be putting in those long runs and getting closer to the big 26.2!

Me and Thomas running together while at my parents' house.

I added speed work back in this past week. I decided to do the same speedworkout I had done 3 times at the beginning of the season last fall. I thought it would be a good way to gauge where I'm at right now compared to where I was then. I know I took 3 weeks off from speed work and hard runs so I should be a little behind where I was last year. But I had also been doing speed work since May compared to no speedwork until August last year so there was a chance I would be in a similar place as far as my speed goes. I was curious and interested to see where I stand. I was excited when I got home and saw that I had run faster splits for all of my repeats compared to each time I ran the workout last fall. Even though I took some time off from speed work, I don't think it has hurt me too much and I think in the long run it will benefit me because I gave my body that time to rest and get back to where I needed it to be. Even though having a tough season in the spring really sucked, I'm so glad I had that experience to learn from so I can now make better choices going forward! I feel like I have more flexibility and control now that I don't have a coach anymore and that's actually working much better for me. I was surprised to find out after my experience in the spring I was more cautious than my coach was and I'd rather err on the side of caution at this point. I'm excited for my first fall race coming up this weekend, The Corndog Challenge 5k, where I will eat a chicken and waffle, a caramel apple, and drink a mimosa while running 3.1 miles.