Fall training week 10. 6 weeks to go

My kind of crappy vacation week at the end of August got put into perspective when I found out a friend's kid got bitten by a rabid bat that week. Yeah. Perspective. (he's fine, just has to get a lot of needles with the rabies vaccine).

Monday: Labour Day! Which meant I could meet Patty at the entirely reasonable hour of 7 am for a run by the lake, rather than something godawful like 5 am. Took it easy in case my hip decided to act up (it was fine) and did 8k. The weather was horribly humid, so I was glad we were only doing 8k.

We waded into the lake to soak our calves after the run, which felt so good I had an impromptu ice bath when I got home in order to also do my quads and hips.

More foam rolling and ART stuff, which I plan to do every day for the next little while, since it seems beneficial. Plue we have Netflix now and I can watch old episodes of Futurama while I roll things out. Good news, everybody!

Tuesday: Back to school for the kids, back to work for me. Senior kindergarten and grade 3 for the girls, sniff. *obligatory where does the time go why are they so big waaaaaaaaah*

I was only off a week! How did all this work pile up?

The cold that was threatening on Saturday showed up full force Tuesday afternoon. GRRRRRRRRRRRRR. I was going to try some strength training but felt like shit so went to bed early. Really, if you have allergies, you should be exempt from getting a cold until allergy season has passed.

Wednesday: Up early after a lousy night's sleep (cold symptoms, bleeeeergh) to get in an easy run. But the temperature had dropped, it felt like fall, and as soon as I started running I felt amazing (honestly running is just the best treatment for cold symptoms - I feel great while I run and for a few hours afterwards). So I did a little bit of tempo just to see how things would feel. Hip felt normal, and running fast felt fantastic. YAY. 2k warmup, 3k tempo (5:24, 5:27, 5:16), 1k recovery, 2k tempo (5:40, 5:19), 2k cooldown. I was making it up as I went along, clearly. WTF with that 5:40?

Finally cool enough to try out my new pink compression socks, too. What, you've never had a visit from the Running Fairy?

Thursday: Lunch run, since my husband was out of town. Easy 9k on one of my favourite routes, on the Hamilton-Brantford rail trail. I wanted 10k but had a meeting and needed to leave a few minutes to shower, lest my stinky self cause the meeting to end prematurely. Wait, maybe I'm going about this all wrong...

Trail surface picture is for barefoot Alan, in case he wants to try running this trail.

Friday: Very unusual Friday long run.Weekend plans made it necessary to get it out of the way early. I started out planning a big 22k loop, then realized 4k in I couldn't remember if I'd applied bodyglide or not. After debating a bit just how bad things might get (answer: UGLY), I decided to do a 10k loop back around home, lube up, then a 12k out and back. It worked out well since it turned out I REALLY needed to go to the bathroom 9k in. It did mean more hills than I usually do on an LSD, but that's probably good for me.

Suddenly things look less Summer Green and and a little more fall.

Ice bath when I got home (hurts so good), lots of foam rolling/ART in the evening.

Saturday: Rest day because my husband and I had to catch a flight to Chicago! A mini-vacation without the kids, score! And, cheap, because the real reason I had to go to Chicago was for a conference, so most of my expenses were covered by work, and my husband used points for his flights.

PIZZA

Sunday: First day of the conference, but I was not going to miss the chance to run on the Chicago waterfront, so I headed out early to get in a short easy run. Amazing. I'm in love with this city! Ran past the aquarium, Soldier field, etc, and enjoyed the hell out of every step. It was windy but I didn't care because I was having such a good time drinking in the sights. Ended up doing 8.5 (or possibly 9, my watch was having a lot of trouble during the first ten minutes and I think dropped some distance). Now I'm eagerly anticipating 2 more runs before I have to leave. Only problem being I shorted myself one pair of running socks when I packed - might have to slip back out to the Magnificent Mile to correct that oversight before dinner Monday.

Weekly summary: 58k run in 5:41:23. And a trip to Chicago! No TRX or weights, oops. I will have to do better at that this week.

The week ahead: another 60k week ahead with two more Chicago runs (hopefully a tempo for one), track work Thursday, and another longer than half distance LSD. 

Song of the week: only one choice, Berzerk by Eminem. I knew within 10 seconds this song would be a fixture on my running playlists.