Week 5?

Little kitty not only keeps me company when I am sick, she also likes to climb all over me while I try to stretch. Her name is not really little kitty, it's Mitten. She has too many toes which make her paws look like mittens.

Monday
Injury prevention day! Core strength with a small amount of body weight strength training for upper body and legs. I also spent a fair amount of time stretching. Foam rolling didn't seem necessary since I did not notice any tight spots in the previous week.

Tuesday-Friday
Terribly sick.

Saturday
This was the first day that I actually felt a bit better. Definitely not well enough to run though. I toyed with the idea of doing some core work or strength training, but in the end decided I wasn't actually feeling that great. I spent about 25 minutes stretching just for something to do.

Sunday
I wanted to run on Sunday but told myself no. I have had chest colds before and I know from experience that if I try to jump back into running too quickly I will end up relapsing. I battled a chest cold one year from mid September to early November (which is when my doctor finally said absolutely no running for a week). Not going to happen this time!

Training Adjustments:

1. 4 x 4:00 at 5k effort (May 31) and 5 x 4:00 at 5k effort (April 7). Instead of jumping into intervals for my first run back, I moved the May 31 workout to this coming Thursday (April 9) instead of Tuesday. I shifted each 5k effort session after that back one week to accommodate this change. In week 9 of my training plan I canceled a session of 200m intervals at 3k effort. I did not want to miss any of the 5k effort sessions and since I don't have easy access to a track, this seemed like a good workout to cancel.
2. 4 x 90s hill repeats (April 2). Instead of doing defined hill repeats I will run a hilly route on April 12 (see #5 for more info). I have another hill repeat workout scheduled for April 16; I did not want to have two hill repeats too close together.
3. 12 mile long run (April 4). I will not be making up this workout.
4. Technique drills (April 9). I will not be making up this workout.
5. 12 mile long run (April 12). I don't want to over do it this week so I am going to cut my long run down to 8 hilly miles. In my mind I am averaging my long run and my hill repeats (see #2) into a medium distance hilly run. 

I am hoping that these are smart adjustments. I know that I can not make up the 35 miles of running that I missed in week 5, but I also wanted to maintain the progression of my 5k effort intervals. I feel like these runs are very important to improve my 5k PR. I also know that the hill repeats are important for building speed, so I wanted to maintain some aspect of running hills. I am hoping that I made the right decision in cutting the long runs and the technique drills. If anyone has any better suggestions, please let me know!