Final DPHM update

Mr. Shoe and I leave today for Florida, family, and sunshine but the race is not until Sunday.

It is finally here!

Speaking of family, this race is going to be my sister's first half marathon (and I am so, so impressed by how hard she has been training!). Just one year ago she ran her first 5k at the Disney Princess Half Marathon Weekend and now she will be back for the half marathon. We first talked about running this race together ages ago, but due to timing and financial constraints we kept putting it off. I'm super excited that we are finally running it! Mr. Shoe will be running as well so we can cross Florida off of our list. I'm still not quite sure how I talked him into this one, but I am really hoping that he has fun!

My sister finishing her first 15k race!

Also running her first race ever this weekend is my favorite little niece! She is doing the 100m dash kids race at Epcot. My niece and I will be dressing up as the same princess for our races. There is a 100% chance that she will look adorable and I will look like a dork. I am okay with this.

I probably won't be blogging until I am back from vacation, but if you want you can follow me on instagram.

DPHM Week 11

So week 11 was a bit of a disaster. Nothing really went according to plan, but I can't be bothered because I leave for the sunshine state in 2 days!

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 5.26
Wednesday: 4.7
Thursday: rest
Friday: 4.7
Saturday: 5.36
Sunday: rest

Total Miles: 20

Tuesday was speed work, which, as I mentioned, went really well. Unfortunately after my amazing run I failed to stretch and foam roll. The next day my calves were very tight. I didn't realize this until I started my Wednesday run. I ended up walking portions of my Wednesday run. I was very nervous that my stupidity was going to lead to another calf injury, but after taking a rest day Thursday and foam rolling like crazy, everything seemed to be back to normal. I will not be making this mistake again! Speed work = foam rolling. No exceptions!

Valentine's Day run with the husband.

Friday was an easy run just to see how my calves were feeling (perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch!). Saturday was supposed to be my long run but I ended up cutting it short. When I started my run the trail already had a fresh layer of snow and there was more snow coming down. After about 4 miles I came across a car accident that made me a bit nervous since the path I was on runs along the side of the road. I did not want a car to slide off the road and into the path. When I was about a half mile from home the wind and snow really picked up and visibility went to shit. I had a major intersection that I had to cross and I was actually nervous that cars would not be able to see me. Once I made it through the intersection and back to my house I decided that one loop would have to suffice.

Icy souvenirs from Saturday's run.

Sunday turned into an extra rest day when I checked the weather and saw it was -8 degrees with a windchill of -30! That is just too cold for me. It is getting harder to convince myself to head out in the snow and cold to run. I'm tired of struggling against the elements. I remember this happening last year too. I am really hoping when I get back from vacation that the weather will be a bit milder.

Training Talk

I'm starting to get really excited to begin incorporating more speed work into my training! Last week's speed work (alternating easy miles and hard miles) felt so good that I decided to do the same thing this week.

1 mile easy*
1 mile hard: 7:19
1 mile easy
1 mile hard: 7:10
0.5 mile easy
0.5 mile hard: 7:04
0.5 mile easy*

*These distances were actually a bit shorter. Probably closer to .8 for the first "mile" and .45 for the last "half mile." I ran from my house to a park where there is a 5k course marked with half mile splits. I used the pavement markings to track my all of my hard distances, so I know those are accurate. This is the life of a runner without a Garmin, try not to be jealous.

I was feeling really good after the second hard mile, so I decided to add an extra half mile push. It was getting dark and I didn't have my headlamp so I didn't have time to add a full extra mile. The weather has been pretty mild the past few days so the course was almost completely dry pavement, a serious improvement over last week's run!

This will be my last speed session before my half marathon on February 22. I will have about a week of down time following this race (to be spent in Florida! Yay!) and then it will be time to get serious about the 5k. I've started drafting a training plan to take me from the beginning of March to early May (10 weeks total).

First rough draft

 I based my training plan on the one found in this Running Times article. I made a few modifications to tailor the plan to my current fitness level, because I 100% know I am not ready to jump into 6 days a week of running! I am hoping to slowly start incorporating a 6th day each week during this training cycle, but not every week and not at the beginning of the plan.

DPHM Week 10

Monday: rest
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: 5.02
Friday: 3.74
Saturday: 10.67
Sunday: 4.7

Total Miles: 24.13

Kind of a weird week for me. The early part of the week was spent deep cleaning our old apartment before handing in the keys on Thursday. I was tired, stressed, and did not feel up to running. The later part of the week I wasn't feeling the greatest, but since I had already missed half a week, I pushed through.

Thursday was my speed workout. I alternated running an easy mile then a hard mile. Hard miles were ran at 7:35 and 7:33. Since my running path had a number of icy patches that I either had to skirt around or slow down to cross, it was difficult to keep a steady pace. I didn't feel like I was running very hard and expected my pace to be closer to 8:00.

On Saturday I met up with a group of runners from the local running club to run a hilly 10 miler. Confession: I usually pick flat routes for my long runs. So even though this was a couple miles shorter than last week's long run, my legs were tired for the rest of the day.  After the run, one of the runners surprised us with a basket of homemade treats and a thermos of hot tea. A slice of lemon poppy seed pound cake really hit the spot.

Goals for week 11: 30-33 miles, 1 speed work session, long run ~12 miles.

Three Month View

After reading a couple of January recap posts on other blogs, I thought it might be helpful for me to take a look at how my January shaped up. Since I recap each week of training individually, I don't think it is necessary to go into too much detail on how the month went. Instead I want to focus on how January compared to December in terms of training, and what changes I hope to see in February compared to January. I'll be calling this the Three Month View.

December

Total miles ran: 108.74
Speed sessions: 1 (tempo run)
Longest run: 9.43
USD (unscheduled rest days): 0
Races: 0

I am actually surprised by how many miles I ran in December. I would have thought it was about 20-25 fewer if I had to guess! For building back from run/walk intervals in October and November I made excellent progress in December. The mild weather also was in my favor.

January

Total miles ran: 112.47
Speed sessions: 2 (1 interval; 1 strides)
Longest run: 12.82
USD: 2 (1 weather related, 1 personal)
Races: 0

January was a bit trickier. The first couple weeks were spent taking it easy on my hamstring. I am pleased to see that instead of skipping runs I still put in 5 days a week of shorter, easier runs. The weather was less cooperative: some runs were modified due to the weather, one run was canceled. The only other run that I missed was the weekend that I bought a house/moved (can't feel too guilty about that!).

February

Total mile goal: 115
Speed sessions: 3
Longest run: 13.1
Races: 1

I plan to continue to build mileage slowly in February, but due to the race/vacation don't expect my monthly mileage to be much higher than December and January. This will be my first race in about 5 months. I'd like to see a bit more consistency in getting my speed work completed, however this is contingent on the weather. Having fun during the half marathon and staying healthy are my top priorities for the month.

DPHM Week 9

Monday: rest
Tuesday: 4.7
Wednesday: 5
Thursday: 4.7
Friday: rest
Saturday: 12.82 + strides
Sunday: 3.74

Total Miles:30.96

The weather provided an interesting element to this week's training. Thursday morning the weather was described as "ice pellets." I'm not sure how exactly ice pellets differ from say hail, but everything was covered with tiny balls of ice. It snowed later that day and warmed up a bit creating a squishy mess. I was planning on doing a tempo run on Thursday, but since conditions were not ideal I ended up just doing an easy run.

Hello, snow!

The forecast was calling for a major blizzard on Sunday so I bumped my long run to Saturday afternoon. The weather was perfect for a long run and I had dry pavement the entire time. To make up for missing my temp run I threw in about 8 strides towards the end of my long run. As predicted, when I woke up on Sunday there was already a fresh inch or two of snow. When I headed out for my run around 11 am, there was about 4 inches of fresh powder to run through. Even though I was running at a very easy pace my legs were working hard the entire time.

Sunday run done!

I am so glad that I got out early for my run, by 3:00 there was already 6-8 inches of snow. It is still coming down, but I will be happily staying inside for the rest of the night. This weather definitely has me looking forward to my trip to sunny Florida in a few weeks!

I'm not quite sure what my plans are for week 10. With my long run this week ending up close to 13 miles, I am feeling ready for a half marathon in 3 weeks. Since the past few weeks have all been increasing mileage, I might want a cutback week.