Week 9: Time to Start Cranking Things Up

As I previously mentioned, I did not hit all of my training runs during vacation.  I got my quality in, but not the quantity.  So this week coach said I needed to pick it up a bit.  Unfortunately, I have been exhausted and feeling beat up all week.  The lack of good sleep during vacation + lots of hills really kicked my butt.  Despite feeling beat up, I was able to hit all of my scheduled workouts though.  Here is how the week panned out:

Monday I ran 9.1 hilly miles (8:50 pace) in Maine.  It was warm and ridiculously hilly, but I got it done.  The best news is that John ran the first 3 with me.  So glad his back is improving!

Tuesday was a rest day.  We got up super early for our flight home, but our travels took twice as long as planned thanks to delays.  We were all pretty exhausted, but excited to come home to this:

Wonderful Way to Come Home!

My boys' friends had put up these signs and filled the house with balloons and birthday signs - very fun!

Wednesday I ran 9.2 miles with tempo intervals.  I warmed up then ran 5 x .625 (1000 meters); .25 (400) recoveries.  I was shooting for 7:08 pace and was pretty close on all of them.

Thursday I ran 8.4 easy (8:57 pace).

Friday was another day for tempo intervals.  This time it was 1 mile @ 7:08 pace; .25 recoveries.  Just after I got my last mile repeat in, my Garmin 305 died.  It has been slowly losing battery life over the last few weeks and I was really bummed it did not even last an hour.  Oh well, at least it was nice enough to let me finish my intervals first.  :)  I was scheduled to run 4 striders at the end of my run, but my right hip flexor was not happy with me so I skipped them.  

New toy :)

Saturday I had 75 minutes easy on tap.  I got in about 8.5 miles at 8:54 pace.  Again I skipped the striders because my hip wasn't very happy.  The fun part was that I got a brand spankin' new Garmin 610 to replace my dead 305.  It was fun playing with my new toy!

Sunday I ran for 2 hours.  I ended up with 13.6 at 8:54 pace.  It was a lovely cool, overcast morning, which was very welcome.  The down side was my new Garmin heart rate monitor chafed the crap out of my chest despite liberal application of Body Glide.  Ouch.  I actually had to take the thing off after 11 miles it was rubbing so much.  :(  After my run I did a couple of hours of yard work.   

Total: 57.2 miles (8 hours; 20 minutes)

I have been completely slacking on my core the last couple of weeks - time to focus on that.  I also realized I only have 4 more big training weeks before the taper - yikes!  Where has this season gone?!  Time to gear up for some serious work...

Next weekend I am running the Madison Mini Marathon, so I have slightly less volume scheduled.  Hopefully that will enable me to get to the starting line without beat-up muscles and will position me to the next several heavy training weeks.  Fingers crossed.