On Monday, my little brother came into the city with his girlfriend. I got them tickets to Avenue Q because it was their anniversary and I though that would be a nice thing to do. Though Monday was supposedly a rest day, I walked over 21,000 steps so it could be counted as cross training as well. My watch claims that was the equivalent of 8.2 miles measured in steps. Probably walking that distance in flip flops is really not the best for my body.
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I did a trifecta of treadmill runs. I created little routines on index cards for each day and gutted it out while watching the biggest loser. I vastly prefer running outside but this past week in NYC has been brutal. There have been heat advisories and air quality alerts for most of the week. I think that my exercise induced asthma can handle one or the other, but not both. Thus, I ran 6/9/6 all on the treadmill.
On Friday I worked on studying my Mandarin. I went for a very short swim - it would have been longer but there was a 12 or 13 year old boy behaving like an idiot in the lap lane and a screaming baby by the pool. There's only so much junk I want to deal with while training. I also got a deep tissue/hot stone massage at my favorite cheap massage place in Manhattan. It really helped me feel a whole lot better.
On Saturday I ran 6.1 miles - finally outdoors. The first 5 miles were easy and then for the last I had some crazy stomach pains. I was dry heaving ... thankfully this doesn't usually happen on runs and it was probably just a result of dehydration?
Today I did my longest run to date of marathon training -- 15 miles. I got out there by 5:15 am to beat the heat. There were still drunk people out partying in the park when I left for my run in the morning.
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| It was really dark outside when I began my run at the local park. |
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| Oh baby, look at those sunglasses resting on my head - I'm glad I had them for when the sun came up :-) |
I also experimented with fueling. I used two packets of clif shot bloks and two nuun tablets. I felt pretty good throughout the run and between pre and post run I lost less than two pounds - so I stayed pretty well hydrated. Since it was my first time running past the half marathon distance I took the advice of people in the running communities I belong to. They suggested multiple shorter loops near my apartment so that if things weren't going well I wasn't far from home. I did two loops of my 6 mile route and then picked up hubby. He ran the last 3 miles with me. Knowing that he was meeting me was really helpful. It made me focus on just getting the first 12 miles done, without being preoccupied by completing the total distance. Since I've run seven half marathons getting to 12 miles wasn't overly worrisome to me. In the end, I successfully completed the run and it went a hell of a lot better than my long run from last week :-)
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| Bam! 15 miles done! |
Week 5 Summary:
Miles: 42.1
Pace: 11:55 min/mile
Stayed on Plan: Yes, runs as sequenced and I even did strength training/yoga a few times this week. I'll try to do it every day this week!
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