Richmond Marathon Training Take 2 - Week 8

I was very nervous about this week. Last year, I broke my foot during training week 8, so that was heavy on my mind.

This year, I've survived and better still, it turned out to be a strong week.

4 runs for 31.7 miles
8.5 miles on the bike
1600 yards in the pool

Running miles logged so far: 165

Training highlights:

• First 30 mile week since week 8 of last year
• Only my second time running a true 14 miler and felt great for the duration. Truth be told, this was supposed to be only a 13 miler, but whoever made the route for our MTT run went a bit over. When I got back to the stadium, my Garmin read 13.8 miles, so I kept running to round it out to 14 because why the heck not?
• Beautiful weather on Friday was too tempting so I threw caution to the wind and snuck in 5 unscheduled miles 
• I'm officially 1/3 of the way through MTT training season!

Training lowlights:

• On Tuesday my body went into rebellion. I had episodes of room-spinning-dizziness all day for no apparent reason. I had to take the day off from work and ended up sleeping for hours upon hours. 

Neutral:

• I missed Saturday's Team Navy run but luckily had the option of going out with Team Cocoa on Sunday instead, where I made a new friend (Becky) and ended up being the first person to finish the run (likely my first and last ever "first place finish" ha!). It was a very interesting shift in dynamics for me; when I'm with Team Navy I also often run in the front of the pack which is a group of about 8 guys and one other woman, Lauren. With Team Cocoa, things were a lot more femme-centric. For the first half of the run we had a front pack of 4 women, then Becky, myself, and her husband pulled away after a SAG. I ended up finishing first because I did not stop at the last SAG.
• I bought new d-bag glasses on Friday which are cosiderably less d-bag than my previous pair. In fact they are nearly non-reflective but still polarized. On Saturday, I found my original d-bag glasses. Figures.

Hydration belt status:

• Virginal

This week I officially start the very regimented Run Less, Run Faster program of speed work, tempo run, and long run. Because I did my long run on Sunday, my week is thrown off from it's usually Monday/Wednesday runs schedule so I'll be doing my first speed work session tomorrow morning. 

But first, I feel like I need to study up tonight on exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. RLRF speed work sessions look overly-complicated and in the past when I tried to wrap my brain around them, I basically glazed over and shut down. Seeing as how I'm supposed to complete one tomorrow, I cannot procrastinate any longer and will have to figure it out. 

Right now my plan is to go to a local high school track that I have heard  is open to the public during the summer and do the work out there. If I get there at 6:45 am and it's not open I'm not quite sure what I will do instead, so cross your fingers that the intelligence I have gathered is correct.