Fall 2013 training - week 3

The weather forecast for this week was kind of scary:

The sensible thing to do would be to not run at all. Runners, however, are not sensible.

Feels like FORTY ONE?? Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. Another week of getting up at the asscrack of dawn to avoid spontaneously combusting in the sun.

Artist's conception of how I feel running in the summer sun. I use the term 'artist' loosely.

Even at 5 am, though, the weather still sucked. Feels like 31 and the sun isn't even up yet. Ugh I say. Ugh.

I would write a snarky caption, but I'm too exhausted from the heat.

So did I make it? Did I get all my runs done? How badly did it suck?

Monday: TRX. My Monday night trainer was off somewhere camping (BOO) so did my at home routine. My left shoulder objected to pushups (not sure what's going on there), so I gave up on those, but I did manage quite a few chin ups and hit all the other major muscle groups.

Pikes make me feel like such a badass. They aren't actually that hard, but they feel (and look) damn cool.

Tuesday: 8k with hill repeats. Got out the door before 5am and it was not entirely terrible. Humid and hot, but bearable. And the view from the top of the hill always makes it worth it.

Cloudy so the sunrise wasn't as spectacular as usual. Still, I love this view.

Downed a bottle of water during the run and a bottle of NUUN when I got home. Strawberry Lemonade NUUN is another thing that isn't entirely terrible, but I won't be going out of my way to drink it. The citrus one is better.

This bunny must have found something super delicious, because I scared him off the sidewalk on every hill single repeat. He just kept coming back for more.

Wednesday: 10k easy. It was approximately a billion degrees with a million % humidity, and felt more like wading through hot wet air than running. Approaching 5k I was debating heading home, which would have left me about 3k short of my 10k goal. And then, like a oasis in the desert, I saw that there were sprinklers running on the field at the local high school track.

This week, sprinklers were a welcome sight. Do you think I could hire a firetruck to follow me on my runs and hose me down every km or so?

So I changed plans and direction and ran about 3k on the track. Normally running easy loops on the track is super boring so I don't do it, but each lap had a run through the sprinklers as a reward, and it was wonderful.

Thursday: 8k tempo run (4k at 5:03-5:14/km pace) was on the schedule.

OH COME ON. Feels like 33 at 5 am? INARTICULATE RAGE.

Given the weather and my lack of access to a treadmill, I decided to run this at the track so that I wouldn't have to deal with any hills (and I was secretly hoping that the sprinklers would be on again - spoiler alert, they weren't). I also decided not to look at my watch and run tempo effort instead of tempo pace, since I was figuring the heat would be sapping my will to live, much less my ability to hit tempo pace.

It worked out pretty well - it felt like I wasn't running particularly fast during the tempo portion so I was surprised to see my splits were 5:14, 5:13, 5:17 and 5:18. Given the weather, not bad at all. I did have to stop for water halfway through, so it wasn't an ideal tempo run, but overall I'm pleased with it.

The running blog mafia informs me my blog is dangerously lacking in watch shots and sweaty selfies. Since I haven't figured out how to take a selfie that doesn't make me look like a serial killer, here's a watch shot.

Thursday night I did a TRX class that was totally exhausting (might have had something to do with the 5 am wake up for the morning run). We did a ton of lunges and squats and my legs were shaking right from the start!

Friday: A well earned rest day. Ate a lot of food. Food is good.

Let's call this carb loading.

Saturday: Looked at the weather forecast and saw that Sunday was going to be much cooler, so postponed the long run a day and did an easy 8k. A series of thunder storms rolled through Friday night that blew out much of the humidity, and left a lot of downed tree branches. I heard that both north and south of us there were power outages and big trees down everywhere, but the worst I saw was one tiny little tree snapped off.

Why yes I did just get a new app that lets me do these fun tiled photos. And yes you will be seeing lots of them!

Sunday: 21k solo long run. I usually like to have company for the long run so I'm not tempted to quit early, but was kind of in an antisocial mood so was fine to run alone with my thoughts and a couple of episodes of Radiolab. Solo long runs always give me doubts about my eventual goal to run a marathon (I notice a lot more how my legs hurt after about 18k - how on earth would I ever run 42?), but other than that this run was lovely. I thoroughly enjoyed the dramatic weather change to no humidity and cooler temperatures! And it's always nice to run half marathon distance at roughly the same pace I ran my very first half ever, and see how far I've come that that pace is now easy.

Elevation profile of my long run. Maybe the sore legs have something to do with the long gradual climb after 5k?

My favourite post long run breakfast - poached eggs with cheese. Usually on toast, but we were out of bread so I made do with rice cakes.

Overall a great week of training. 55.7km run in 5:35:33. 2 TRX workouts done, which I'm pleased about since one of my goals for this training cycle is to improve my core strength.

On to the next week! A final week of hill training before I head back to the track, and the tempo gets longer. Here's hoping the weather cooperates for a great week.

Song of the week: Honestly nothing really grabbed my attention this week - ran my long run without music at all. I did listen to a few episodes of Radiolab, which I highly recommend on the long run because it's just so interesting. You can't stop mid episode; you have to keep running until you hear the end!