Day 43 (August 10): Cross training day. Originally I was going to take this as a rest day, but I had a friend visiting from out of town who wanted to get drinks. Now that citibike is in my neighborhood, I decided to bike there to see him. Hubby and I met at Upstate for dinner beforehand. The service was incredibly slow, but the food was amazing. We grabbed a single drink with Ben and headed home because I tend to go to sleep by 10 or 11pm most nights and it was sleepy time.
Day 44 (August 11): I struggled to get the motivation to get out there to run because I had overslept in the morning, and by that I mean that since I didn't roll out of bed until 7am I decided that I didn't want to feel rushed with trying to get my run in and get hubby off to work =P I eventually ran in the evening and took some super beautiful sunset pictures. I really do live in a wonderful place to run. I ran 6 miles at a super duper easy pace. I stopped a lot to take pictures and just tried to enjoy running.
Day 45 (August 12): Unscheduled rest day. I had two forces pulling at me - a 5k down in Prospect Park and the Nike group run. Instead of doing them I just sort of watched netflix and ate Chinese food. Yep, that was not part of the plan but at least I hadn't taken my rest day yet.
Day 46 (August 13): I ran 9 miles in the morning. I had trouble getting out the door again, but I made it work. I ran from my apartment to the middle of the Williamsburg bridge and back. Yay for hill training? Hubby had to leave for work early, so I met him as he was leaving to take the punk dog for her walk :-)
Day 47 (August 14): I ran 7 miles after hubby left for work. In the afternoon I biked to meet a friend for vegan ice cream. In the evening I met with hubby and other friends for a celebratory dinner. One of my friends is taking a few months leave of absence from her job so we went to celebrate at Amelie Wine Bar. The food was amazing. I'm really happy that my friend is taking some time to herself and away from her high stress job. Too many people in this world focus only on making money and burn themselves out emotionally and physically by working stressful jobs for years on end.
Day 48 (August 15): I met up with Kristin (a girl from some of the running communities that I belong to) to run part of her long run with her. She had misremembered the day of the NYRR long training run and was going to be forced to run 16 miles all by herself. I planned on joining her for 7 miles of her long run, but I wound up running 8. We ran through the "summer streets" event put on by the city which was nice, but also annoying. We still had to stop a lot for traffic, which is something I'm not really used to. Also, my GPS went wacky and definitely overestimated the distance. High rises really mess with GPS signal. We also did a loop of central park. I showed her my secret bathroom on the 72nd street traverse, because uncrowded bathrooms are necessary on long runs. We had a nice talk about our jobs and lives. Kristin is a really good running partner for me because she is basically exactly my pace (I think our HM PRs are less than 2 minutes from each other) and she leads an interesting life :-) After running with Kristin I took a zoom zoom shower and headed to my brother's to home brew.
Day 49 (August 16): NYRR long training run #2. I didn't run the first long training run because it took place the day after I got back from Paris. The long training runs are interesting -- they have water stations, portapotties, misters, and some food, but are untimed. People can choose to run any distance from 6 miles up to 20 miles. They provide pacers for 7:00 pace --> 10:30 pace at :30 increments. As a penguin, of course I couldn't take advantage of the pacers, but I still enjoyed the camaraderie of being joined by so many other runners. I was running a bit late to this, but still made it on time for my start. Of course in my morning rush I'd forgotten to bring my inhaler. Luckily I was telling a woman from Runners United about this and she offered me a puff from her inhaler. It was an identical prescription to my own inhaler so I gratefully accepted her offer. Normally I'm quite the germophobe but I really thought the risk of winding up in the ER and/or having a miserable run like the Brooklyn half was worse than the risk of germs... knock on wood!
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| At the start of the long run! |
Thanks to the inhaler I was able to kick ass (well, for me) despite the hot/humid conditions. I ran 16.5 miles during the long run and felt pretty good the whole time. I slowed down a bit from miles 11-15 but I was able to pick it back up for the last mile. My only mistake was standing in the misters too long -- by the end of the run my feet were a soaked sloggy mess. I also had some issues with the subway because of Sunday service and not checking the route in both directions but overall I felt really good with my longest run to date.
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| Success! |
Week 7 Summary:
Miles: 46.5
Pace: 12:07 min/mile
Stayed on Plan: Well, I got all 5 runs in and actually went 1.5 miles over my planned mileage for the week. I've been too lax with my stretching/foam rolling/yoga and I think it might come to bite me in the ass (or hip, or back, or knee). I need to set up some structure to make sure I get these workouts in. Maybe I should do them while watching TV?
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