St. Patrick's Day Run and Week 5 Summary

Saturday 17.0 miles/2:30:19/8:50 average pace

All week I put off planning a route for Saturday's run- 17 is an odd distance and doesn't coordinate well with most my routes. Plus, Zach wanted to run some of it with me which requires even more complex route-planning... so I just ignored the problem. Not surprisingly, that lead to a stressful morning. I am awful at making spontaneous decisions, and the more I delayed, the later it got, the warmer it got, and the more stressed I got... it was a bad cycle. Finally I put my shoes on and decided we'd just run from home. I've got a good (though kinda hilly, half pavement-only, and totally exposed and hot) 12 mile loop from my house, and I planned on adding a brutally familiar 5 miles at the end. I get a huge portion of my motivation on long runs from changing scenery. So, this is pretty far from ideal.

Well, it turned out great! It was quite warm, and having to run BY my house with 5 miles to go was pretty tough, but I handled it well. Rather than being excited about the landscape, I was held over with satisfaction with my pace. I kinda wanted this to be partially a Marathon Pace run, so I'm glad I pulled that off.

The first 7 miles were gradual climbs, followed by a huge downhill in mile 8 (good Boston training!), then flat the rest of the way.

1- 9:31
2- 9:11
3- 9:02
4- 9:06
5- 9:00
6- 9:01
7- 9:20 (First 7 miles- 1:04:13 [9:10 average pace])
8- 8:41
9- 8:37
10- 8:38
11- 8:43
12- 8:38
13- 8:48
14- 8:48
15- 8:32
16- 8:32
17- 8:01 (Last 10 miles- 1:26:06 [8:37 average pace])

Zach did 12 miles with me- a distance record for him! He's doing so good. :) Although next weekend I am planning on running my 20 miler alone. It would be a little hard to include his shorter distance into the run, due to the location and the route and all that. But also I will use the alone time to really focus and get pumped for Boston, which is coming up soooooon. While I'm out doing that, he's going to try his own solo long run... that will be a first for him.

After the run, an ice bath, a long shower, and a huge lunch, we joined in some St. Patrick's Day festivities with our friends in the afternoon. That resulted in a very early bedtime. :D

Yesterday I woke up very excited.... the local St. Patrick's Day 5k Fun Run has a new route which went RIGHT by my house!!! It was so fun to watch. I stood on my balcony and cheered all the runners for about a half hour. It was cool to see the first speedy men, then the leading ladies, then the rest of the pack came huffing and puffing... then lots of walkers and strollers and little kids. It's a quiet residential area, so they didn't have any crowd support besides me! Everyone was in need of some cheering at that point (a little over a mile to go) so cheer I did. Lots of people waved and said "thank you!" and I know the others thought it. :) It was really fun. I wished I could have been out there too (I've done the race before) but I enjoyed my job as cheerleader.

After that excitement, we went to the gym for a short lift (Zach's got us on a 3-day split thing, so we had to. I tried to get out of it!) and swimming. I swam 25 laps = 1250 meters in about 45 minutes. That's a swimming distance record for me! :) I felt great and had a blast. Zach timed me on one lap, and I went all out. I swam 50 meters in 54 seconds! Yahoo!


It was a big week for me and I'm feeling super.

TOTAL miles for week 5: 41.25 miles!

PLUS: 3 x upper body weights, 1 light lower body weight session, and 3 x swimming for a total of 3100 meters!