Probably Running

Another week of training is in the books, but that is hardly the news of the day. My new blog is (mostly) up and running! So instead of recapping my week here, you will need to click over to my new site to read about week 5 of training. Please let me know what you think, even if it is something that needs improving.

www.probablyrunning.com

Blogging about blogging

I started blogging about two years ago and have really grown to love the running/blogging community. Connecting with fellow runners over the ups and downs of training and racing is the very best.

When I started this blog I figured I would just use it to chronicle my husband's and my attempt to run a race in every state. I thought maybe my mom might read it. This was also around the time that my training started to get a lot more serious. I had two half marathons under my belt and was itching to run faster and further.

Instead of the occasional race report I found myself using the blog as an outlet for analyzing my training. The blog became less of a Heather + Kendall thing and more of just a Heather thing. Which is fine. My husband doesn't mind that I've hijacked our blog and now when I try to bore him with the details of my latest run he just tells me he already read about it on the blog.

But it feels super awkward to use a plural moniker when I am just one person.

I need to take care of that awkwardness. It drives me crazy. So with that in mind I have been brainstorming some rebranding ideas (is it called rebranding if you have ~10 followers?).

I've also been thinking about moving my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Blogger has been kind of troublesome lately with blurry images on mobile and not letting people subscribe to my blog (Sorry Charissa!).

With that said, I definitely don't want to lose touch with any of friends I have already made. So hopefully you will be willing to bear with me while I am moving things around. I was able to import my existing posts and comments to Wordpress, but I still need to spend some time figuring out how to handle RSS feeds and other subscription things (Bloglovin). I should be ready to share the new site with you very soon!

Any feedback or advice while I am working on this?
Will you follow me to my new site (pretty please!)?

5k Training: Week 4

My legs felt better than last week, but training still felt slightly harder than I would like, especially towards the end of the week. However I think it was the strong winds this weekend that played a large part in how exhausting my weekend runs felt. That and the fact that I ran a mere 52 miles in January and jumped that up to 134 miles in February. Fortunately week 5 is a cut back week.

Monday

Distance: 6.85 miles
Pace: 1.26 miles @ 9:37, 6 x 60s hills @ 6:45 [4:00 recovery], 2.95 miles @ 8:59
Comments: I brought my running gear to work with me Monday morning so I could take advantage of a large hill on the medical campus. The pace felt very manageable for each hill climb, probably because of the substantial recovery period between each interval. I easily could have managed another 2-3 reps.

I could tell it was a good run day for me since my cool down run was fairly hilly and it felt effortless. I couldn't believe the pace I saw when I uploaded my run data. After feeling so out of shape last week this was a huge confidence boost.

Tuesday

Distance: 3.33
Pace: 9:49
Comments: Tuesday is usually my rest day but with a winter storm warning for Wednesday and Thursday I wanted to take advantage of the good weather while it lasted. This put me at 7 days in a row of running and I could definitely feel it on this run. I could tell my legs were very tired so I focused on just keeping it slow and easy.

Wednesday

Distance: 0
Pace: 0
Comments: Snow storm. I knew it was coming. I was hoping to get out for another quick run Wednesday night, but decided to pass. It snowed all day but the temperature was slightly above freezing creating a blanket of kind of wet, heavy snow and kind of slush on the roads/sidewalks.

Thursday

Distance: 6.1 miles
Pace: 9:09
Comments: Another confidence boosting run. My first mile was just under 10:00 pace but as I warmed up the pace dropped without any extra effort. Last three miles were all sub 9:00. Things were really clicking in the first half of this week!

Also I have to share my love for my local parks! It snowed all day Wednesday and continued to snow through Thursday morning, but by the time I was out running at 4 PM the running/biking paths had been plowed. Awesome!

Friday

Distance: 5.02 miles
Pace: 9:07
Comments: Easy run with my favorite Ironman, Ty.

Saturday

Distance: 11.1 miles
Pace: 9:23
Comments: This run felt harder than I would have liked due to half of it being into a strong headwind. Even into the headwind I managed 1.5 miles at tempo pace (7:31).

Sunday

Distance: 4.1 miles
Pace: 9:45
Comments: Recovery run. 20 mph wind with gusts up to 37 mph. On top of already tired legs it was a pretty terrible run.