Back to the grind after a long weekend, and a busy one at that!  Before I get too behind I wanted to do a quick recap of my training and happenings over the past two weeks, which included a half-marathon race recap as well as a training camp recap.  So let’s get started!

May 16-May 22

Monday – Rest day

Tuesday – Tempo Run: 1 mile warmup, 2 miles @ 8 min pace, 4 minute recovery, 2 miles @ 8 min pace, 1 mile cooldown.  Ouch.  Those were tough.

Wednesday – Off/Stretching/Foam rolling

Thursday – 5 mile run  I woke up with a scratchy throat and felt achy.  My coach told me to scrap this run, load up on vitamin C and rest.

Friday – Off

Saturday – Bridge the Gap Quincy Half-Marathon.  I thought about writing a race recap for this one, however it just wasn’t very eventful, so there wasn’t too much to devote an entire post to.  JMR’s parents picked up our packets for us on Friday since we were arriving that evening after it closed.  Once we got into town, we had a quick dinner at Applebees (I stuck to my bland pre-race food, grilled chicken and potatoes) and were in bed by 10p.  Saturday we were up at 6a, I ate my usually pre-race banana and when we arrived at the start at 7a, I ate a few honeystinger chews.  20 minutes before the start I did a 1 mile warmup, and then headed to the start and did some stretching.

When the gun went off, the first couple of miles felt pretty darn good, and were a little bit under the planned goal time of 8:20, but after those miles I made sure to hold back/keep with the planned pace.  Miles 2.5-5.5 were an out and back section, and I saw JMR as I was heading to the turn around and we gave each other a quick high-five 🙂 I could also see there weren’t very many women in front of me, however the 10k hadn’t split off yet, so I wasn’t sure how many of them were running the Half-Marathon. At that point I felt good and felt that way until around mile 8, and then things started to feel tough.

Mile 9 I fell a little off pace, around 10 seconds slower.  Miles 10.5-12.5 were in this awful boring out and back near a boat dock and they were lonely and miserable.  Mile 10 was also 10 seconds off and I was pushing pretty hard to keep that pace.  Mile 11 was worse, 9:08 and I just wanted to be done.  Sadly mile 12 wasn’t any better and I kept falling off the pace, clocking in at 9:31 and I even ended up doing a little bit of walking at the beginning of mile 13 (I KNOW) because it just felt so awful.  It was like hitting the wall at mile 20 in a marathon, but good grief, this was only a half!  Finally I mustered the energy to get my butt to the finish line, with mile 13 clocking in at 9:46 and I have no idea what the extra .1 was (and I was .2 over in distance) but I sprinted with whatever I had left to come in at 1:54:24.  Ouch.  2 minutes slower than Go!.

After silently sulking and thinking it over for a couple of hours during the drive home (and texting with my coach), I felt better after texting my coach.  He said that I had hit the paces I needed during training to run the planned race pace, and perhaps whatever bug I had on Thursday probably still was a little in my system and that’s all my body could do that day.  I do think that maybe having caffeinated gels would have helped a little (I had eaten plain vanilla without caffeine), but he was probably right. Bummer, this just wasn’t my day and there will be other races.  Time to move on.

Sunday – Rest day

Hooray for small races, I still managed to snag 3rd in my AG (it’s a pin…no I haven’t worn it yet) and placed 8th overall out of 111 females

Total Training Hours: 3:00

May 23-May 30 (training camp ended on Monday so I’m lumping that day into this week of training)

Monday  – Rest Day

Tuesday  – Tempo run that was shortened into a 3.5 miles due to a very tight/sore right hamstring

Wednesday – 1800 y swim

Thursday – Rest the leg day/Massage.  Turns out that it wasn’t my hamstring that was causing the pain, it was my abductors, and oddly enough my left one was waaay tighter than my right, but the therapist said that usually the pain presents on the opposite side from overcompensation.  Interesting.  Also, that was a *painful* massage.  Friday my abductors were tender to the touch.

Friday-Monday – Team ECo Training Camp

Total Training Hours: 13:31

Phew!  I’m still pretty wiped out (especially my legs) from last weekends events, thank goodness training this week has been light/low volume 🙂

Happy Friday!