Weekly Workout Recap, Week 8

I have no pictures right now because my camera is being weird... so, sorry about that. But we'll make this recap short and sweet and I'll try to find interesting pictures to throw in from my phone :)

I bought this shirt for $2.88 at Academy. $2.88!!

What I was supposed to be doing:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 6 mile tempo run; 4 miles @ 8:26 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 18 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

What really happened:

Monday: rest rest and more rest

Tuesday: 2 miles @ about 9:00 min/pace with the brother; 30 min Pilates

Wednesday: Jackie Warner's arms & abs circuits; 30 minutes on the bike at the gym

Thursday: 6 mile tempo run; 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace, 1 mile @ 8:20 min/pace with 1 mile warm up & 1 mile cool down

Friday: Jackie Warner's arms & abs circuits; I don't remember if I did anything else, but I think I might have walked and I don't have my workout log with me so I'll update this later ;)

Saturday: 5k race

Sunday: 18 miles; the first 9 were at a solid 9:50 min/pace, the last 9 varied between speeding up and slowing down; 10 min total body Pilates, 10 min long & limber Pilates

Overall planned miles: 26

Overall actual miles: 29.1

Louie decided to get in a quick run before I went out to conquer 18 miles.


Despite the fact that I really had a hard time getting motivated to work out for most of the week, I feel like my week went pretty well. My 18 mile run went much better than last week's 16 miler, and it left me pretty satisfied with my whole week of workouts.

I'm taking this week really easy because I'm tired and my body just needs a break. That being said, hitting 18 miles was a really big deal for me because it showed me that my body is capable of carrying me through a full marathon. I don't know what it was about making it to 18 but it made it very real and exciting :)


Tell me something exciting about your weekend! We went out for Mexican food on Saturday night and I had the most ginormous margarita of my life! Because I am a lightweight these days, I was also tipsy after that 1 margarita. We also went to see Horrible Bosses. Eh...

Competitiveness

Merriam-Webster defines the word compete as follows: to strive consciously or unconsciously for an objective

Taken in that context, I am a very competitive person in just about every aspect of my life. Especially running. Nine times out of ten I have some sort of goal that I want to meet. Usually it's a time goal that I've arbitrarily picked out. Sometimes it's that I want to place in my age group. Sometimes it's both. For instance when I ran the 10k, I had several goals set, the most important of which was that I wanted to run it under 53 minutes. I finished in 51:13 and finished first in my age group. 

Within 20 minutes of finishing almost 2 minutes under my desired time, I already was plotting out the next time that I wanted to beat. My thought process went something like this: 


YES! I DID IT! I AM AWESOME!


::20 minutes later::


Hmm... I should run it under 50 minutes. I will be really fast then. 


And thus the new goal was born and now I won't rest until it's accomplished. The same is true for everything from 5ks to marathons. I set goals and if I reach them I immediately start to plan out how to exceed them.

Don't get me wrong - I think having goals is one of the best ways to advance in anything and everything. But Em wrote a great post the other day about giving yourself some credit. And it really got me thinking - as competitive as I am, I'm doing some pretty awesome things right now.


I had a really sucktastic 16 mile run on Saturday. I bitched about it, both mentally and verbally, all day long. But I RAN 16 MILES. It was hard, it was miserable, I walked a lot, heck I stopped a lot, there wasn't a single step that I took on Saturday that didn't cause me some sort of mental or physical pain, but I did it. And if I can run 16, I can run 18. And if I can run 18, I can run a marathon. And that is a-freaking-mazing, whether I BQ or finish in 6 hours.


Sometimes I think I let my competitiveness with running get the better of me. Sometimes it causes extreme negative self-talk conversations in my head. And sometimes I need a good kick to remind me that every single day I'm working towards incredible things.


And a big tribute to Em for writing the post that sparked this post.


THAT BEING SAID, LB came over last night to run with me. It was a 2 mile training run for me, supposed to be easy, and I figured it'd be a cake walk for him. Needless to say, it was a very humbling experience for me, one that reminded me that we all start at square one. 

We ran at about an 8:45 pace give or take - sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But by mile 1.5 he was dying and I could see it written all over his face. 


So I stopped my Garmin and we walked. I started it back up and we ran. I let him walk while I ran back and forth until we hit roughly 2 miles (my Garmin died at about mile 1.83). And in that last half mile and for the rest of the night, I remembered everything about when I started running. I remembered getting winded after a mere 5 minutes. I remembered hating it. I remembered my first 5k and how freaking exhilarating it was. 

1.5 miles at an 8:45 pace is pretty good for someone that never runs. 


Oh and after taking our picture, Sean had to take this picture "for the blog" (his words) so that everyone knows that he was working while we were running, not sitting around eating bon-bons. Even though when we got back 25 minutes later he was sitting on the couch in the dark.

Are you competitive by nature? With what?


Do you set new goals immediately upon breaking old ones? 

Weekly Workout #8

I'm pretty bad at posting workout recaps on Sunday and workouts on Monday, huh? Ohhhh wellll...

THIS WEEK:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 6 mile tempo run; 4 miles @ 8:26 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 18 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

This actually isn't very accurate. I'm SUPPOSED to be doing this:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 6 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 6 miles @ 9:54 min/pace

HOWEVER I am going out of town next weekend so there's absolutely no way that I will be running 18 miles. And let's be realistic here, I would rather give up training then run 18 miles on Friday before work. So I swapped the weeks :)

I've also managed to "gain" 3lbs. in the past 2 days. I'm positive it has nothing to do with the 5 rounds of thin mints I ate before going to Yogurt Cup Sunday or the 15 different meals I ate yesterday. So I don't know what that's all about.

I am pretty cyclical with foods. I tend to get really into one thing and eat it ALL THE TIME for a few weeks straight and then get tired of it. Right now I'm OBSESSED with overnight oats (again). 

These are actually "in the shower" oats because I decided at the last minute this morning that's what I wanted for breakfast. 

I challenge you to get your peanut butter oats jar this clean.

What breakfast foods are you loving now that it's summer?

Weekly Workout Recap, Week 6 + I am so lazy

Right now Sean is busy being productive and sweating out in the Houston heat.

I, on the other hand, am sitting in the AC, reading blogs and calling it "productive". I also have managed to change out of my real clothes and into my workout clothes, even though I haven't worked out today and have absolutely zero plans of doing so. Oops. And I'm debating eating for the third time today.

And I'm eating for the third time today. Oh and I'm being so lazy that even though the Patriot ended 30 minutes ago I have yet to turn the TV off so I'm listening to the theme music over and over again.

I'm also (im)patiently waiting for Sean to finish doing whatever he's doing (ok, he JUST started doing it) so that I can force him to drive me to Yogurt Cup where I can indulge in the source of my broke bank account yet again. If you know us in real life you know that Sean and I are arguably the cheapest people in the world when it comes to stuff and are master clearance shoppers with anything and everything, so why we're willing to fork over $10+ for fro-yo all the time is beyond me. Oh wait, it's because I force us to go AT LEAST once a week. My bad.

So why do I have the luxury of doing absolutely nothing today? Honestly, I should be doing a lot of things but I'm going to blame my lack thereof on my sucktastic run yesterday.

And ya know, actually, now that I've read over all that, I'm doing quite a bit today. So I don't feel so bad afterall.

What I was supposed to be doing:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:56 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 mile tempo run; 3 miles @ 8:23 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 16 miles @ 9:56 min/pace

What really happened:

Monday: Not.A.Thing.

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:50 min/pace, 30 minute Pilates class

Wednesday: Jackie Warner's 40 min. Total Body Circuit

Thursday: 5 mile tempo run; 3 miles @ 8:20 min/pace, 10 min long & limber Pilates

Friday: Jackie Warner's Upper Body Circuit and Abs Circuit, 2 miles walking

Saturday: 16 really awful horrible miles somewhere between a 9:50 and 10 min pace with lots of walking; 10 min Total Body Circuit Pilates, 10 min long & limber Pilates

Sunday: Eat ginormous baked potato with BBQ turkey, watch the Patriot, eat more baked potato, wait for Yogurt Cup. Eat Girl Scout cookies while waiting. Exhausting.

Overall planned miles: 23

Overall actual miles: 23 (running); 2 (walking)

Yeaaahhhhh about that run yesterday....

I made it to mile 8 before I had to stop. I walked around the house, chugged a bottle of water, laid on the living room floor. Got up, ran to 10 with some sporadic walking. Back to the floor. Ran to 12 with sporadic walking. Back on the floor. Ran to 13. Floor. Ran and walked to 16. Died. It.was.horrible. No clue why. Don't you love that?

LB (little brother) is coming over Tuesday and we're going to run together, so I'm hoping that starts a track of superb runs this week so that I can forget about the awfulness of my run yesterday.

How's your weekend going? Anyone do anything exciting?!

Long runs or races this weekend? I feel like it's been a while since I've raced. I'm going through slight withdrawals. There's a really cheap 5k this next weekend that I'm thinking about doing - $18 entry fee... Hmmm...

3 Things Thursdayyy

There's still time to enter the giveaway!

1. I hit a really bad lull this week with training. I've been going at marathon training pretty hard lately and this week I hit a big fat brick wall. Every.single.workout has been a HUGE struggle. Once I get there I'm OK, it's just the getting there part that has been a little rough...

2. This little book, courtesy of this beautiful BFF of mine, has been a HUGE lifesaver. HUGE. I love writing in my workouts and how I felt during them so that I can look back and see what factored into what when I'm reviewing my weekly workouts.

3. I am the most miserable shopper known to man (woman?)... And I hate the mall. With a serious passion. I used to be a magnificent shopper, but I think after working at the outlet mall in San Marcos that it stripped me of my desire to shop.

Hate the mall or love it?


Do you track your workouts? If so, how?

Weekly Workout Recaps & Weekly Workout #7

I know, I know... I'm behind. So I'm combining. We'll start with Weekly Workout #6's Recap... Oh and I don't feel like uploading new pictures right now (I am lazy, I know) so I'm going to supplement this post with some of my old favorites. :)

What I was supposed to be doing:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:57 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 4 miles speed work, 2x1600 in 7:56 with 800 jogs in between

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 14 miles @ 9:57 min/pace

What really happened:

Monday: 10 min Long & Limber Pilate's; foam-rolling

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:50 min/pace; 30 min Pilate's class

Wednesday: 15 min L5 speed intervals on stair stepper, 15 min L10 elliptical, 15 min L5 hill intervals on bike

Thursday: 4 miles speed work, 2x1600 in 7:53 with 800 jogs in between; 10 min Long & Limber Pilate's

Friday: Walked 3 miles @ L 4.5, I 1.0 

Saturday: 14 miles @ 10:00 min/pace; 10 min Pilate's Total Body Stretch; 10 min Pilate's Long & Limber Stretch

Sunday: 1 mile @ 10:00 min/pace; 10 min Core Basics Pilate's, 10 min Lower Body Basics Pilate's, 10 min Upper Body Basics Pilate's; 1 mile @ 9:50 min/pace

Overall planned miles: 20

Overall actual miles: 20 (running); 3 (walking)

If you're wondering where any of the strength-training was... well, so am I. I really have no good answer other than I just didn't do it and wasn't feeling it. This is 100% against what I believe in, because I am a firm believer in strength-training, but.... I don't know, it just didn't happen. OHHHH WELLLLLL.

THIS WEEK:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:56 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 mile tempo run; 3 miles @ 8:23 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 16 miles @ 9:56 min/pace

I'll tell you right now that I'm having a very hard time getting motivated so far this week. I don't know if it's from the long weekend or what, but the workouts I've done so far have been a struggle. 

What do you do when you're lacking motivation? I tend to not give myself any time to think about what I'm doing. I just throw on workout clothes and tell myself to do just a little bit of what I had planned and usually I get through it OK.


How do you do with long weekends? I totally did not do well as far as "healthy eating" went on Monday.... or last Friday... but Saturday and Sunday I was OK. No not really, the whole weekend wasn't what I normally eat and I felt it Monday evening. 

Marathon Excitement & Weekly Workout #6

First things first... I'M RUNNING THE HOUSTON MARATHON! Thank you to everyone who offered up  kind words while I stressed about getting in or not, but it's official now - I'm going!

Unfortunately, my right leg has been giving me some grief over the past few days (OK, weeks) so in an effort to make sure I'm in tip-top shape for Marathon #1 in November and #2 in January, I'm going to the sports doctor tomorrow morning and have been taking it easy so far this week. Depending on what he tells me, that may or may not affect my workouts this week :(

But here's what it should be looking like:

Planned miles for the week: 20

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 2 miles @ 9:57 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 4 miles speed work, 2x1600 in 7:56 with 800 jogs in between

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 14 miles @ 9:57 min/pace

In GOOD news though (and to give you a little something to look forward to this week), there will be a giveaway here on Friday! In the meantime, I have some fun guest posts lined up for the rest of this week!

:) Hope every one's week is treating them well so far!

Weekly Workout #4

So far I've been feeling like this all week:

But that's ok. Cause at least he's cute, so maybe no matter how worn out I am, I am looking that cute too? There's always wishful thinking... Good thing my week looks like this:

Planned miles for the week: 15

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 5 miles @ 9:59 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 miles @ 9:59 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 5 miles @ 9:59 min/pace

Easy... right? :) We'll see.

Sean and I spent Saturday after the race doing this:

And this:

And this:

And being cute like this:

(That all translates to going to Galveston, playing washers on the beach, and drinking cold beer.) (And yes, I realize that drinking beer on the beach is counter-productive to the 7 miles I ran before that, but it was nothing compared to the pizza I inhaled when we got home...)

Do anything fun this weekend?

Do you like going to the beach? I love being out by the water - river, ocean, you name it. And while Galveston isn't the prettiest beach, I still like going and playing in the sand.

Weekly Workout Recap, Week 3

We're gonna keep this short and sweet today because 1. I want to work on my race recap and 2. I have to recover from not being home all day yesterday. Weekends are way too short.

What I was supposed  to be doing:

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 3 miles @ 10:01 min/pace
Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day
Thursday: 5 mile tempo run with 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace
Friday: Rest/Cross-training day
Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day
Sunday: 10 miles @ 10:01 min/pace


What really happened:

Monday: Jillian Michaels 6 Week 6 Pack Workout 1

Tuesday: 3 miles @ 8:57 min/pace
Wednesday: Jillian Michaels 6 Week 6 Pack Workout 1
Thursday: 5 mile tempo run with 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace
Friday: 10 min. core basics pilates, 10 min. long and limber pilates
Saturday: 1 mile easy warm up, 10k race @ 8:24 min/pace (more on that to come)
Sunday: 2 miles easy, 10 min/pace; 40 min Core Yoga Flow


Overall planned miles: 18

Overall actual miles: 17

You already know that both my 3 mile easy run and 5 mile tempo run sucked. Majorly.

The Jillian Michaels 6 week 6 pack is good, but man my legs were sore, which I think factored into the crappy runs. Because of the sore legs, I opted to not go three times with that this week. There was no way I could handle sore legs for yesterday's 10k.

In all honesty, all of my workouts were sub-par, but I'm ok with that because I had a great race yesterday. But I'll recap all of that later. For now, I'm going to go drink my coffee and enjoy the morning now that I'm awake (because the cats would not leave us alone at 6:30 this morning, jerks).

And I'll leave you with this:

Vegas and Workouts

Sean's going to kill me for this but I just can't resist.

Back here I posted a picture of Sean and I. His response was "thanks for posting the picture of me with my double chin". So, in case you had any doubt that guys can be self-conscious about things, here you go:

You're welcome.

I've never been to Vegas. I'm not even sure that I ever really cared about going to Vegas. BUT two of our good friends are getting hitched in Vegas this July! When Sean and I celebrated our first anniversary, we did so with the thought of having a small vacation over our actual anniversary and a big vacation later on in the summer. However, with a Vegas trip in there, we just couldn't justify spending a ton of money and taking a week off work in June and then spending a ton of money and taking off several days in July.

Solution? We're going to Vegas early! And I'm SO excited! I don't know when my feelings about Vegas changed (still not a big gambler), but I'm stoked about going!

Onto week 3 of marathon training :) 

I suddenly can't remember where I saved my cool PDF of my workouts, so this is going to have to do:

Planned miles for the week: 18

Monday: Rest/Cross-training day

Tuesday: 3 miles @ 10:01 min/pace

Wednesday: Rest/Cross-training day

Thursday: 5 mile tempo run with 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace

Friday: Rest/Cross-training day

Saturday: Rest/Cross-training day

Sunday: 10 miles @ 10:01 min/pace

Yesterday on my weekly trip to Target I picked up this:

I think I'll do reviews of it like with her Ripped in Thirty (you can find week 1 here, week 2 here, week 3 here, and week 4 will be coming this week). But since this has you doing 3 weeks at level 1 and then 3 weeks at level 2, I'll just recap them at the end of each 3 week period. Maybe I'll have a 6 pack after.

The 10 miles this weekend will be interesting considering I'm running a 10k on Saturday. I'm thinking that I'll do the 10k and then do the remaining 3+ sometime Saturday versus trying to do the 10k Saturday and then the full 10 Sunday. Decisions, decisions...

Hope you all have a good Monday! 

Do you try and stick to training plans when you have them? I try and stick to them just because I like having things pre-planned out. But I definitely can be flexible if I need to!

What do you do when you have a long run scheduled that coincides with a shorter race run?

Weekly Workout Recap, Week 2

What I was SUPPOSED to be doing:

What REALLY happened:

Monday: Jillian Michaels Ripped in Thirty Week 4

Tuesday: Easy 4 miles @ 9:47 pace

Wednesday: Jillian Michaels Ripped in Thirty Week 4; 1 mile easy to be a part of NRD

Thursday: 4 mile speedwork - 1 mile warm up at 10:00 min/pace, 1 mile @ 8:00 min/pace, 1/2 mile @ 10:00 min/pace (times 2), 1/2 mile cool down

Friday: Not a thing. I chose to sleep in and sleep off being at Buffalo Wild Wings the night before. Sometimes beer and sports games with two of our best friends on Thursday night trumps working out in the morning.

Saturday: 9 mile long run @ 10:00 mile/pace

Sunday: 50 minute Pilates DVD

Overall planned miles: 17

Overall actual miles: 18

 

The Ripped in Thirty just didn't happen three times this week. And it was the last week. Sad, right? I debated doing it this morning, but Pilates just sounded better and I am all for listening to what I feel like doing versus forcing myself to do something I don't want to. Who knows, maybe I'll do it at some point today (probably not).

 

 

 

And as for that random one mile... well, it was a cross-training day but at 10:00pm Wednesday night I decided I wanted to run a mile for National Running Day. So I did. One of the joys of having your own treadmill. Best Craig's List purchase EVER.

The four miles on Tuesday were a breeze, which was a blessing because I ran them after work in the Houston heat. The four mile speedwork was like running on air. I flew threw it and loved every single second of it.

 

I did the 9 mile run on the treadmill yesterday morning. Things went great the first 6 miles. Then I made the fatal error of looking to see how far I had gone. Definitely thought I had been running longer than I had and that's when EXTREME boredom set in. I just started talking to myself. Out loud. Good thing I was at home. I would love to show you beautiful sunrise pictures like last week, but the truth is, our treadmill is in a room that we have done nothing with yet and it is facing a wall.

 

Beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Or not.

 

 

 

But he sure is cute!!

 

 

Getting bit by the bug...

...the marathon bug that is.

Yesterday I signed up for the Houston Chevron Marathon lottery (again, fingers crossed I get in!).

But I am an unabashed overachiever. I'll be the first to admit it. It takes me a while to gain the confidence to move forward with something, but when I do I'm all in, no ifs, ands or buts.

If you remember (or if you don't) I ran my first 5k in December 2010. HOWEVER the first 5k I signed up for was in January 2011. After I signed up for the EP5k in January, I didn't want to wait. Have I mentioned I'm pretty impatient? I am.

Fast forward 7 months.

I've come leaps and bounds with running. Is now a good time to mention that I started "training" for 5k's in 2009? I have a tendency to over-train because I get nervous. But once I take that leap.... Anyway, I digress.

As you may know, I started marathon training last week.

I signed up for the Houston Chevron marathon yesterday morning.

I have been stalking June 1 for weeks now waiting for 8am to roll around so I could sign up. Low and behold at 8am our Internet was out at our house.

So I did the next best thing and logged onto my phone. It wouldn't take my payment over my phone.

So I jumped into my car and high-tailed it to work and was registered by 8:45.

Blogged.

Worked.

Talked to Britt.

Thought hard.

Worked some more.

Talked to Britt some more.

Thought even harder.

And I signed up for the Rock 'n Roll SA marathon.

:)

It's all or nothin' round here, baby.

Marathons & National Running Day

I hope you all are out there celebrating National Running Day today!

Well, kind of. Sometimes it feels not so great while running, but afterwards I (usually) feel great!

There's some great deals out there for National Running Day - go here to see some of the deals that are going on today (perfect time to sign up for a race...)

So how am I celebrating National Running Day? Why, by taking the day off work and running my first marathon.

Or not.

But I did enter the lottery for the Houston Chevron 2012 marathon (!!!!! please, everyone, say a little prayer for me that I get in!!!!!), I'll be doing another day of marathon training (ok, ok it's a rest/cross-training day, so I'll really be doing some cross-training and I'll probably run a quick mile for good measure, just to be a part of National Running Day...), and I'm seriously considering signing up for a Rock 'N Roll race somewhere close by... we shall see (and by we shall see, I mean as soon as I wrap this post up I'm googling what would be a good option...)

This whole having Monday off work has really thrown me off, so I'm a little behind on all the things I wanted to post about. We'll be all caught up by the end of the week (maybe), but for now we'll just take a look at what I'm supposed to be doing this week :) Last week was a huge success though!

There's going to have to be some tweaking on this week, because June 5 is my birthday and I'm not sure that I'll be running that day, but the 9 miles will happen, be it the 4th or the 5th.

GO RUN!

So tell me, how are you celebrating National Running Day?

Anyone running any RNR races this year?

Weekly Workout Recap, Week 1

Yeah, yeah... I know, I know... I said I'd do a Sunday post, maybe Monday because of the holiday here... But we were busy doing a lot of this...

And I suck. And even though I did read blogs over the weekend, the thought of actually writing a post maybe crossed my mind once. (I know you all really care, too, so I am sorry). But not really sorry because I was too busy having fun.

ANYWAY. Here is a refresher of what my workouts were supposed to loosely resemble:

Actual:

Monday: Jillian Michaels Ripped in Thirty Week 3

Tuesday: Easy 3 miles @ 10:02 pace

Wednesday: Jillian Michaels Ripped in Thirty Week 3

Thursday: 5 mile tempo run, 1 mile warm up at 10:00 min/pace, 3 miles @ 8:27 min/pace, 1 mile cool down @ 10:00 min/pace

Friday: Jillian Michaels Ripped in Thirty Week 3; 35 min interval run (<--- DUMB.)

Saturday: Rest

Sunday: 8 mile long run @ 9:59 mile/pace

Overall planned miles: 16

Overall actual miles: 19.5 (take that RoseRunner... juuuust kidding, rock star over there does that many miles in a day. A day. And it's my weekly total. No shame.)

The week started off really easy. I felt like I was cheating working out so little. The Jillian Michael's stuff will get its own post, but really, I do feel like I'm taking it easy by only doing a 25ish min workout on those days (granted, I'm super sore).

The 3 miles on Tuesday I had to consciously work to run that slow. I almost think I should have run it on the treadmill because then I'd have been forced to keep the same pace, but I enjoy running outside too much.

I was a little really worried about the 5 mile tempo run because I decided way ahead of time to do it on the treadmill. I really wanted to hit that 8:30 pace for the 3 miles, and the easiest way to do that (for me) is by running it on the TM where I set the pace. I had the option of running the 3 miles at an 8:34 pace (level 7.0) or an 8:27 pace (level 7.1) so I opted for the 8:27 (all at a 1% incline). I went to bed Wednesday night telling myself over and over again that I would have a great TM run (I'm not a TM running kind of girl. I hate it for everything except intervals or fast 1 mile sprints).

It was glorious. Seriously. I had the best run ever. One of those runs where you really feel like you're running on clouds and you never want to stop.

Friday I messed up. I started off good with the Jillian Michaels. But I was feeling really off by the time I left work. And since hubs was going to the mow the front yard, I decided to run (dumb). I knew I needed to give my legs a break, so naturally I ran a really hard interval run. My legs were shot by the end of it. Seriously shot. Saturday I did nothing because they were so tired.

When I woke up Sunday they were still tired. But there was no way I was skipping the 8 miles.

So I laced up and hit the pavement in my favorite neighborhood to run in.

There's really no way around it, they were hard.

I had to talk myself up to get to mile 7, all the while telling myself that if I got to 7 I could walk.

Naturally, when I hit 7 I told myself I was dumb for thinking I'd walk the last mile and I sucked it up and ran it out.

I really did try to hit that 10:04 pace, but my miles were all over the place.

Sometimes I was running way too fast, and sometimes way too slow (wind did factor in as well). I was really happy to be done (and happy that I sucked it up and ran all 8).

I ended up averaging pretty close to what I was supposed to run, but let's be honest, all 8 miles were brutal.

Because I just cant help myself...

Happy Monday Tuesday.