Hi! Happy Sunday!

Peak week is officially coming to an end, and to be honest it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. Sure, it was tiring, exhausting, mentally tough, but at the end I know I needed it.

This week left me still with a million questions of what I should do for Chicago. Paces I should hit, what I should aim for, etc. I really am struggling to hone my goals for it. I want to go big, but I also want to be realistic and not completely destroy myself.

I’m going to give myself 1-2 more weeks before I make the decisions. Some days I feel strong and some days I feel like I’m blowing up. That’s probably normal, but it’s still mentally frustrating to me.

 

Here’s my running for the past week:

Monday – 8 miles

I did 8 easy miles to start the week. They were very slow, very tiring, but that’s typical for Monday morning for me so I just try to trudge through it until I get there.

Wes had to work, but I had off so I still go up with him around 4:15 am but then went back to bed afterwards. It was glorious!

 

Tuesday – 8 miles

Instead of my typical Tuesday workout, I opted for another easy day. I knew I had a 10 mile tempo so I wanted to focus more on hitting that.

I ran outside my house for about 3 minutes up down until my husband left to run. He ran the first section with me until we got to a lit area.

Another slow 8 miles, but my legs felt a lot better than Monday.

 

Wednesday – 11 miles (tempo)

I did my tempo run on the treadmill again this week. Not ideal, but what are you going to do? The goal is to get outside next week!

0.5 mile warm up
10 mile tempo (varying between what I thought was 7:35-7:13 pace)
0.5 mile cool down

Notice how I said thought. On Friday, I shared with you all a trick for testing your treadmills accuracy. Turns out, my treadmill was about 3 mph OFF. That’s a pretty big amount.

The bad news – I didn’t run as fast as I thought I have been running the past 2 weeks on my tempo runs. The good news – thankfully I have made it a point to adjust my paces throughout the run. What I thought was a 7:19 is actually 7:35 if my calculations are correct. While the pace was still slower it was closer than it could have been.

I got frustrated at this, but then I decided nothing I can do now. Move on and try to focus on doing more outside for the remaining weeks.

 

Thursday – 8 miles

Thursday morning Wes was away to take a test, so instead of running outside I got up and headed to the gym to do my 8 miles on the treadmill.
I averaged around a 8:36-8:40 for the run at a 1% incline. It wasn’t easy, I was tired and felt rushed but I got it done.

 

Friday – Off

Per usual, I took my rest day on Friday.

That didn’t stop me from focusing on eating the right foods and fueling properly. I enjoyed this delicious breakfast of Love Grown Foods Hot Oats!

Peach Vanilla Almond was delicious!

 

Saturday – 18 miles

This run was a bit of a cluster. The plan was to go to the local trail and get my long run/workout in. However, as Wes and I were outside our house in the morning warm up it started pouring. It had been overcast all morning and we struggled to know what to do.

We both had a workout worked into our long runs so the thought of getting caught at mile 5 in the pouring rain with a lot more to go didn’t sound appealing.

So, off to the gym we went run on the treadmill.

The workout went something like this:
8 mile steady (with 2 x 1 minute GMP strides at the end of mile 8)
3 miles at 7:41 pace
1 mile at 8:20 pace
2 miles at 7:35 pace
1 mile at 8:20-8:30 pace
2 miles at 7:35 pace
1 mile cool down

18 miles total and those last 2 miles at 7:35 were pretty tough. I had to really dig deep, which honestly I probably needed!

I was pretty dead at the end, but I think the treadmill today was a good challenge mentally.

 

Sunday – 8 miles

The goal is 8 easy recovery miles to get my legs back from Saturday.

 

Oh, and after 5+ years we finally got to go to a college football game on Saturday night! My Dad got tickets and offered for us to come along.

 

How did your running go this week?

At what point to you make your race day plan?