Tuesday: Vinyasa yoga with Penny. Another packed class but another great one.
Wednesday: 7 mile tempo run. I was not feeling confident about this after Monday. Goal was 1 mile warm up, 5 tempo miles @ 7:19 pace, and 1 mile cool down. It was cold and there was a stiff breeze. But we did it. The tempo miles were right on target or slightly under. I really needed the ego boost. It was great. Unfortunately my SI joint is being pesky and I was in pain for the rest of the day.
Thursday: Spin class with Becca at 6 am. I can't tell you how much I wanted to just adjust my alarm/hit snooze when it went off at 5:08 am. There is just something about having to be somewhere (ANYWHERE) before 6 am that I just can't handle. If it's 6, I'm good. If it's 5:50, I'm not good. That extra 10 minutes slays me. Anyway, I scolded myself into going and I'm glad I did. I forgot how much I love Becca's spin class. She uses music very effectively and I her encouraging
Friday: Hallelujah praise Jesus, it's a rest day!
Saturday: On tap: 14 mile long run. The goal: An overall 8:00/mile pace with overall negative split. I found a negative split calculator and popped in the target finish time, selected a "moderate negative split" option with first half slower than second, and got some recommended paces mile by mile. It recommended running 8:05 for the first 7 miles and then slowly ticking off 1 to 2 seconds for the last 7.
Per usual, we had a LOT of trouble running 8:05 despite a lot of "Hey, we should slow down" and "HEY WE SHOULD SLOW DOWN!" Running a slightly faster first half only meant that to get the negative split we had to push even harder at the end. It was a slog, but again we were successful. First 7 miles were at an average of 8:00, back 7 were 7:47 with the last mile at a 7:24! Overall average 7:54.
Hello negative splits.
Sunday: Rest day! I sat on the couch under my awesome fleecy sweater blanket and watched BBC nearly all day.
Total Weekly Running Mileage: 27.7
Total Overall: 56.7
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This was a good week of training. Monday stunk, but I was able to put that out of my mind and keep on keeping on. Not every run is perfect and that is ok; continuing to push is the important part.
I also had an article published on RVANews this week; it is about the importance of being properly fitted for running shoes and what to expect when you visit your local shop for a fitting. Big props to Jeff Van Horn, who spent a good hour and a half talking with me and doing a very good job pretending I was a brand new runner who had no idea what I was doing (Jeff has fitted me for just about every pair of shoes I've had so that was quite an act).
Friday I had the day off thanks to Lee Jackson Day (if you're not from Virginia ,don't ask). I decided to get over my fear and embarrassment of being a noob and went to a local cycling shop to finally obtain spin shoes. I've been thinking about getting a proper pair for more than a year but immediately felt overwhelmed and afraid that I was making a bad choice when I researched them on Amazon. Inevitably I'd put some in my cart, then delete it all a few hours later. Finally, my BFF said, "Why don't you just GO TO A STORE and have them help you??"
Duh.
I went to Coqui Cyclery, neither of which words I can pronounce so don't ask me to, and had a great experience. The expert in attendance pointed me to a basic pair of spin shoes that were on sale for $40 (woohoo!!). Clips were another $13 and the Expert installed them for me. Not too shabby for $55. I left feeling very happy that I had found a better deal than I had on Amazon and I also didn't have to waste hours trying to figure out how to properly install clips. Now I'm actually looking forward to trying them out on Thursday morning.
Me? Looking forward to spin class? That truly speaks to the power of new gear.
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