Fall 2014: Week 6

How things went this week:

Monday: Rest day. Rest good.

Tuesday: Tempo! I cheated by running the tempo portion on a route with a slight downhill grade, but really it' s a pretty small grade and psychologically I think it was good for me to see the tempo paces coming up (relatively) easily. 5:14, 5:02. 5:06, 5:04, short break, last km in 5:05. So even a touch fast. confidence builder! Ran 12k total.

Wednesday: Easy 8k run on the schedule. Alarm went off. Did this:

If I'm going to miss a run, the Wednesday easy run is the one to go with, at least. My troublesome right hip has been acting up again (nothing major, but enough that I'm kicking myself for slacking on my physio exercises), so it seemed like a good idea to take the morning off and see how it felt at the end of the day.

Hip felt good at the end of the day, so Wednesday night I redeemed myself with 37k on the bike, scouting out some of the planned route for a group ride on the Civic Holiday. There's some fun hills I'm inflicting on my friends. I'm so nice like that. Hopefully they are all still speaking to me after the group ride...

Looking back down one of the hills we'll be climbing on the group ride.

Thursday: Intervals. I had my fingers crossed they would go better than last week. 4:48, 4:48, 4:49, 4:51, BOOM. Yeah they went pretty well. They are still a touch slower than they should be but I'll take it, since at least I'm seeing 4s at the beginning again! 10k total.

My 'I'm so happy with those intervals' face.

Friday: Fasting blood test in the morning (which is TORTURE OMG the lack of caffeine! Gah!). I was working at home, though, so was able to get out for a bike ride at lunch once I'd caffeinated and eaten after the bloodwork. 42k, longer than I probably should have but the damn bike is just too much fun.

I put this on instagram tagged #catcrossing, and it turns out there are several hundred cat crossing pics. That is the greatest thing ever.

Saturday: Long run day - in Ottawa! Fun! The husband type person and I drove up there Friday night for a Saturday wedding, and our favourite thing to do while traveling is, of course, to check out new to us running routes.

As Sam pointed out, yes we are both wearing headphones. give us a break, we spent 6 and half hours in the car together Friday and were all out of talk.

We did 19k, so a little short of the 21 or so I wanted, but we didn't get in until midnight Friday and were both working on very limited sleep, so frankly we did well to get to the 19k.

Sunday: Dragged myself out for an easy (solo) 10k, because I knew a run would make me feel better after the wedding shenanigans from Saturday night. Worked out well. Then it was back home to recover from the whirlwind trip.

Random Ottawa pictures.

Weekly summary

Run: 51k
Bike: 79 k
Total: 130.1k in 8 hours, 1 minute

A little short on the run mileage this week (ideally would have been 60k+), but that's how these things go sometimes. Just gotta roll with it and do what you can.

This upcoming week is the third hard week in the current set before I take a cut back week. I'll do tempo and interval runs again, hopefully get at least 100k on the bike, and 60k+ on the run. It's ambitious but I think doable, especially with the promise of a rest week next week!