I Spoke Too Soon....

The last few posts have been upbeat...and rightfully so. I had been KILLING my torture plan workouts.  Last week, however, was a whole different story.  I have been tired.  REALLY tired.  And I have actually had a couple days when I had to FORCE (what?????) myself to work out.  I didn't even go in the pool last week. Slacker.  It all started with my 12 miler.  It was ok, but I just could not hit my splits...and it was only supposed to be 11:10 pace! I felt heavy & ended up with 11:16 splits.  Not horribly off, but I had been hoping it would feel easier.  It kind of messed with my head.

I have to chant this sometimes

Then I worked a couple days & came back to double torture speedwork. I was supposed to warm-up, then do 3x1600 @ 9 minute pace with only a 1 minute break between intervals.  I am actually happy about this workout (though it sucked big-time doing it) because it was freakin' cold & windy.  The temp was 16F & the road that is a perfect mile happens to be a wind tunnel on the best of days.  9:16/9:20/8:55 for those speed intervals.  I'll take it. But I am SO ready for winter to be over.  I hate it...especially the wind.

I did a couple easy 5 milers in there and some biking on the spin bike at the gym.  The gym I go to has a Top Dog competition every march.  It's mostly lifting but there are a couple running categories, a bike one & a swim.  The run I can no longer hit at 'Gold' level since they dropped the mile time to 7 flat and the 5K time to 23 minutes for my age group.  That's 30 seconds and 2 minutes faster that the goal times last year! So in lieu of embarrassing myself (and risking getting thrown off at high velocity from a treadmill) I decided I'd try the bike one.  It's a power:weight ratio thing.  Involves kilo's, watts and a lot of math....whatevah!....I just killed the bike for the 20 minute time frame, got my average watts reading and let the gym dudes do the math.  They pretty much needed a mop to clean up the sweat after that ride!  Lol!  But I did it....earned my t-shirt....and so far I am in the lead in my age category.  (and tell me how 36-45 is a fair age category for those of us skirting the top edges of it????). That ride killed my quads though....I couldn't run the next day and did a pathetic, low effort recovery ride instead.  Saturday was better.  Thing 1 had me run 8 miles at race pace.  I felt reasonably good with a 10:24 pace.

Yesterday I took Thing 1 to Cornell for the last open meet of the indoor track season.  He FINALLY went under 5 for the 1600 on the indoor track!!!!! 4:59.8   Yay! He's run faster on the outdoor track but the indoor one has been a frustrating struggle.  He was pretty happy.  I was the Mum on the track screaming splits at him...hey, he asked me to do it...he didn't say I couldn't enjoy it! After his race he helped out with the young kids in the local track club so I went for a run on campus.  I honestly don't know how XLMIC ran on this campus all the time! It was SOOOOOOO boring....and good Lord, so hilly.  So painfully hilly.  I'm pretty sure I ran uphill the whole 5 miles regardless of what direction I turned.

I am a little worried about my long run this week.  14 miles.  I hope I have it in me & that the weather is reasonable.

It's been a rollercoaster couple of weeks.  But I guess that's just running.

Oh & today I pulled the trigger & registered for the Dunkirk Tri: Olympic Distance August 25th!!!!  Yikes!