All of my workouts and runs in my training recap are set personally for me by my coach.

Good morning!

Thank you all for being patient with me during this week. I know my blogging has been a little slow, but I’ve been trying to savor every minute with family!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! We spent ours with family and that alone made it absolutely perfect. We are blessed to not only live near one family, but both of them! We were able to spend great time laughing and enjoying each other’s family.

I have been so blessed when it comes to not only my own family but my in-laws as well.

 

It was a great weekend!

Thankfully, I have Monday and Tuesday of next week off as well! A nice extended weekend and right before year end so I’m going to need the extra rest!

 

It’s Sunday, so let’s get to running! Here is a look at my Christmas week training.

Monday

Total: 7 miles

I started the week off with a very small hill workout thrown into my normal easy run. I completed 4 x 30 second hill sprints after a warm up and then ran the rest of the miles very easy.

It was nice to break up the run and made the miles go by much quicker for Monday morning!

 

Tuesday

Total: 5 miles

I had an easy run on the schedule for Tuesday. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad starting this day so I ended up on the home treadmill for this one.

It wasn’t awful just one of those runs I was happy was over by the end. I know once marathon training starts I’ll be really missing these shorter runs! I averaged around an 8:50 pace.

 

Wednesday

Total: 7 miles

I saw that it called for rain Tuesday-Thursday so shot an email to my coach on Monday asking if he’d rather me try to move my workout around or just do it on the treadmill. He said the treadmill was fine and gave me some basic pace ranges to shoot for.

Schedule workout: warm up (including some tempo pace), 6 x (2 minutes at 5k/10k pace (he estimated 7:13-7:00), 2 minutes normal run pace (approx. 8:30)), and a cool down.

Actual workout: warm up, 6 x (2 minutes (7:13, 7:13, 7:08, 7:08, 7:03, 6:58), 2 minutes (8:27 pace), and a cool down.

I went to the gym to do this one so that my paces would be a bit more accurate. Besides it being super warm in the gym, the workout went well. I played it safe on the paces in the beginning after Saturday’s bad workout I wanted to make sure I’d do OK.

I finished it out with some leg work and called it a successful day!

 

Thursday

Total: 6 miles

The final run of the work week was a slow Christmas Eve 6 miles. The weather showed a 10% chance of rain when I got up, so I opted to go outside because I did not want to get on the treadmill for another day.

About 2 miles in the rain started to pick up (what the heck weatherman!?) but I kept going. There were about 3-4 times throughout the run where it just poured. I had to stop and take cover a few times.

Overall, it was a nice and relaxing run aside from the crazy rain. This is how awesome my hair looks after getting caught in the rain!

 

Friday

Off – Spent lots of time with family!

 

Saturday

Total: 14 miles

Saturday’s long run was done at my in-laws house so I was excited to get to run on their beautiful trail system again.

Scheduled workout: 10 miles easy, 4 mile progression

Actual workout: 10 miles easy (the miles ranged from 9:00-8:20) and then 4 mile progression (8:06, 8:00, 7:43, 7:40)

Overall, I was happy with how the run went. I wish the progression had been a little more controlled and even. I hit a hill at mile 12 and that took a lot out of me, but I pushed hard and finished it out!

Finished it up with some stretching and leg work.

 

Sunday

Total: 6 miles

Sunday’s schedule calls for 6 easy miles and I look forward to relaxing and attending one more Christmas event!

 

Oh, and before I go I have to share one of my awesome Christmas gifts. I was truly blessed this Christmas!

The Garmin Forerunner 235! I look forward to spending many miles this beauty and trying out even more amazing training features! I will make sure to give you a full report once I have time to really try it out.

 

How did your running go this week?

Do you run on Christmas Day?