You know how I mentioned last week that the weather forecast looked pretty good for the upcoming week. Well it lied. This was one of the coldest weeks yet! It was sub-zero every morning reaching down into negative double digits actual temperatures and even colder wind chill. So I spent sometime inside!! Even running on the dreaded treadmill, aka dreadmill it was a pretty good week. It did help that this was a “recovery” week in the schedule!!

Monday – Run 1 mile at an easy pace, the speed up to goal half marathon pace for 6 miles. Run one more mile at an easy pace to cool down. Well, I looked at the schedule and realized that for me to actually get a hill workout I would need to drive to find hills, and since this was President’s Day and I didn’t have to work, I switched Weds and Monday’s workouts. I did the 10 x hill repeats. It was very cold, 4 above with -21 wind chill, and I was running next to the Mississippi River. The wind, fortunately, was to my back on the uphill, but when I turned around it was like an arctic blast! I felt pretty good and stayed consistent throughout the hills running the .16 mile (257 meters) distance in :58, :59, :59, 1:01, :59, :57, 1:00, 1:00, :56, and :58. I went a little farther on the 10th one – .22miles in 1:20, which was the same pace. The distance was a little longer than it needed to be for the hill, but I didn’t really know. My total mileage for the day was 5.6 miles in 47:22. My average pace for the repeats was around 6:00.

Tuesday – Run 6 miles easy. Run 5 acceleration strides. I ran a mile easy on the indoor track – with my legs aching, before switching to the bike for 8.5 easy miles. I ran the mile in 7:53 and biked for 29 minutes.

Wednesday – Run 10 x hill repeats. Find a hill that is fairly steep and at least 100 meters in length. Run up the hill at a pace that feels like 5K pace. Run 20 meters past the top of the hill. Jog back down to recover. Repeat this 10 times. So today I did Monday’s workout or was supposed to do it. I really tried to do it but the treadmill was killing me. My legs hurt from the beginning and slowly went away (I think it is only on the indoor track and treadmill that my legs hurt). I ran 5 miles in 35:10 which was about 10 seconds off the goal pace. I think my biggest problem with the treadmill is that when I start to get tired my body wants to slow down but the belt won’t unless I make it. Of course I don’t want to admit defeat and slow it down, so I just suffer and end up running too few miles. I did finish the workout with 4 miles on the bike in 14:30. BTW it was -12 outside this morning!

Thursday – Run 4 miles easy. Run 5 acceleration srides. I managed to finish this workout on the treadmill! I ran all 4 miles on the dang thing. I started out slow and increased the pace a notch every half mile or so. I ran it in 30:32. After doing that I ran on the indoor track for my 5 accelerations. It felt pretty weird to run on the track after having been on the treadmill.

Friday – Run 4 miles easy. Run 4 acceleration strides. I finally got to run outside! I almost didn’t run at all. I had decided not to run in the morning because the afternoon forecast was supposed to be really good. I got home a little later from work than I had planned and Christy was already home. I managed to force myself to go out and get the 4 miles in. I did a little sightseeing and ran along the streets to see some new stuff! That worked pretty well except for having to dodge people on the sidewalks, due to the narrow shoveled paths and then parts of the sidewalk which weren’t shoveled at all. I did get to see some new parts of town that we might check out later. I made a big square and came back on the Greenway. My total run distance was 4.92 miles and my time was 39:01. It felt pretty good, even though if you were in the shade it was kinda chilly, being in the sun was great! I did 5 accelerations and those felt good too. I’m glad I forced myself to go out!

Saturday – Run 60 minutes at about 20 seconds per mile slower than your 10K pace. The pace for this run was around 6:46. I met up with the MDRA Polar Bear group again – this week we met at the Longfellow Grill. I ran with the front group today since it was supposed to be a tempo-ish run. I thought they would be a lot closer to the goal pace for the workout. They were running 16 (or 18) miles total so I ran out with them for 30 minutes and then back by myself. We picked up the pace as we ran and were right around 7 for most of it, at one point we ran 6:19 pace (according to the Garmin). It was hard running back by myself, running with the group definitely kept my pace moving. Part way through the run back I decided that if I finished under 65 minutes I would buy a hot chocolate for myself and a latte for Christy. Well I finished in 61:54 so I was pretty pleased with myself. My total distance was 8.32 miles which made it 7:27 pace overall. Not really sure what happened but it still felt pretty good. It was 11 degrees with a bright and shiny sun!! Excellent day for a run.

Sunday – Rest. Sure thing!!

Total Miles: 28.8 miles running and 12.5 miles biking for a combined total of 3 hours 32 minutes and 22 seconds of total workout time!

My year to date mileage is 168 miles running and 22 hours and 35 minutes! I’ve biked 73.8 miles for 4 hours and 24 minutes and .5 miles of swimming.

The weekend was warmer and next week doesn’t have anything under 20 for a high. That’s pretty exciting! Hopefully some good outdoor running is in store! Stay tuned to find out what happens!

[tags] Half Marathon, Training [/tags]

This was a rough week. I started feeling the fatigue of being on a set training schedule and working full-time. It didn’t help that my schedule fluctuated this week so one morning I got up at 7am to run and another 6am. Things should continue to settle down. I am also getting a little bored with running the same routes each day and really miss the opportunity to run on dirt trails. The weather has been a little wild too, fluctuating up and down – nothing like doing speed work with several layers of clothing on!

Monday – Run 2 x 400/800/1200 meter supersets. Run 400 meters at 20 seconds per mile faster than 5K pace, 800 meters at 5K pace and 1200 meters at goal half marathon pace. Do not rest between the distances. Recover between the sets with 800 meters at an easy pace. Cool down with 800 meters at an easy pace. Supersets are an interesting concept I had not heard of before last year and are specific to this training program as far as I can tell. I’ll write a post shortly about them in more detail. Basically it is a 1.5 mile interval with alternating paces inside the interval. My goal times were: 400 1:21 – 1:28 800 2:53 – 3:06 and 1200 5:07. I did this as an out and back run on the Midtown Greenway with a -24 wind chill at 6:20am (there were other runners on the trail!). After my mile warm-up here are my splits for the first set: 1:29, 3:23, 5:32. I didn’t know my pace but knew I was off-pace. After my 800 rest here are the splits from my second set: 1:44, 3:44, 5:52. I think it was definitely a mental challenge, I would much rather have run this on a track so to get constant feedback about pace and distance. I finished with about a mile cool-down and the entire run was 5.57miles in 45:01. It was nasty!

Tuesday – Run 6 miles easy. Run 5 acceleration strides. Biked at the YWCA for 14 miles for 45 minutes. Nothing too exciting happens on these workouts! I did do some accelerations increasing my cadence for a minute or so towards the end.

Wednesday – Standard warm up. Run 8 x 800 meter repeats at 5 seconds per mile faster than 5K pace. Recover between the repeats with 400 meters at an easy pace. Cool down with 800 meters at an easy pace. This was also an out and back run, it was 10 above which made it a lot easier to run. I think the same observations about doing interval training on a track versus on the road plays out here. Plus the change in surface would be nice too! My goal pace for each interval was 2:50 – 2:56. After a mile warm-up here are my splits: 3:08, 3:17, 3:16, 3:24, 3:23, 3:17, 3:23, and 3:28. Again none of them were in my goal pace. Each interval was still sub-7 minute pace though.

Thursday – Run 6 miles easy. Run 5 acceleration strides. This was Valentine’s Day! I woke up at 6am and felt exhausted and didn’t want to run at all. We also were expecting lots of snow when we woke up so I reset the alarm and went back to sleep. I think there is something to be said about resting when you are extremely exhausted to prevent burnout/over-training.

Friday – Run 4 miles easy. Run 5 acceleration strides. I spiced things up a little bit and instead of running down the Midtown Greenway I took off north towards downtown. I followed Chicago Ave which takes you right past the Metrodome – which is just over a mile from our house! I ran around it once trying to find a way to start running back south and after looping around it just over one complete time I found a sidewalk which ended up in a parking lot which took me to the trail leading from downtown south towards the Greenway. I jumped off the trail at Franklin Ave and wound my way home through a variety of side streets. I forgot to do my strides until after I was out of the shower! The weather was -4 air temperature but still sunny! I totaled 4.4 miles in 36:15.

Saturday – Run 10 miles. Run the first 8 miles at an easy pace. Run the last 2 miles at your goal half marathon pace. I was finally able to join the MDRA Polar Bears for a run this morning. It was a good size group and the weather was perfect 12 degrees above with the wind chill at 1 above. The sun was shining, a perfect day to prevent Seasonal Affective Disorder! There were lots of groups going out at different paces and distances I went with the second pack running just under 8 minute pace. We ran along the Minnehaha Parkway for about 5.4 miles and turned around at the Lyndhurst Community Center. We came back stopping for water with 1.5 to go. We finished our run in 10.75 miles at 1:26:40 (8:04). I decided not to do the pickup for a variety of reasons, but it was an excellent run.

Sunday – Rest! You better believe it!

Total Miles: 28.2 miles running and 14 miles biking. Combined total of 4 hours and 33 minutes of working out!

Week 4 should be a little easier week and the 10-day forecast looks a little more promising!

[tags] Half Marathon, Training [/tags]

Another week closer to the half-marathon! This was a rough week of training since I was in Chicago for 3 days of it and ran here in Minneapolis for 3. I had done the research and found a park right next to the hotel, but the weather wasn’t cooperative and I was forced to run on the treadmill at the hotel. In short, that made my legs start hurting again and wasn’t exactly easy for speed work. Here it is in more detail:

Monday – 4×1600 meters at 10K pace with 800 rest. This was quite the morning. I had to get the run in before my flight to Chicago, so I set off down the Midtown Greenway and was just going to us my Garmin for the split times. Everything went great – it was cold and I was running pretty well for the conditions. When it was time to turn around and head home I thought, oh let me check out this other trail – it should connect to a familiar road and I can get back to the Greenway. I never saw any of the roads I expected and pretty soon I saw I-394 which is not close to where I was supposed to be. I ended up downtown Minneapolis on the Kenilworth Trail – having no clue where I was (I’m still not familiar with downtown). I managed to get headed in the right direction and ended up running through Nicollet Mall with snow falling. This would have been beautiful and perfect if I had planned it that way! I returned home 2 miles extra cold, but I did finish the work out and get to the plane in time. Here are my 1600 splits: 6:21, 6:48, 6:54, and 7:06. The total workout was 9.62 miles in 1:18:20 – this included 800 meter recoveries and warmup and cooldown. My 10K pace goal is 6:26 so these splits were a little off.

Tuesday – 6 easy 5 accelerations. I rode the bike today, continuing to do a little cross-training on my easy days. I rode 11 miles in 45 minutes at the hotel.

Wendsday – 7 x 800 meter repeats at 5 seconds per mile faster than 5K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. Run 6 x 400 meter repeats at 20 seconds per mile faster than 5K pace. Jog for 400 meters between repeats. I hate running on treadmills but was stuck doing so at the hotel due to the bad weather. I did my warm-up and tried doing the workout, I’m not really sure what it actually was but I couldn’t handle it. I think it might be the fact that the treadmill keeps going at the pace unless you manually slow it down instead of your body naturally slowing down. I pathetically only completed one of the total 13 intervals while I attempted 2 more. I ran the first 800 in 2:34 right on pace, then the next 700 in 2:18, and finally 400 in 1:21. The total workout was only 2.9 miles in 21:13. I know the first interval wiped me out and my legs were starting to hurt.

Thursday – 6 easy 5 accelerations. Another treadmill day, I was really hoping to get outside but the weather was still bad in the pre-dawn morning. I did 3 miles in 22 minutes. That may have been a little fast for a “recovery” day and my legs were really hurting again.

Friday – 4 easy 5 accelerations. Back home again, I spiced things up and ran from my house to Powderhorn Park and around the park 2x’s. It was snowy with snow cover so this was definitely an easy pace. I incorporated the accelerations into the end of the run, trying not to slip on the ice! 4 miles in 34:32.

Saturday – 45 minutes at 15 seconds slower than 10K pace. Another day on the Midtown Greenway. I ran East until I hit the Mississippi River (I didn’t run on the river this time!) I ran for 45 minutes, I used the lap feature on the Garmin so that I would do a warm-up and then run 45 minutes, but didn’t realize until later that the time never changed even though it did mark the lap – weird. So my total run was 45 minutes with 35 of that being at a faster pace. My overall run was 6.1 miles in 46:04 – and 5.1 miles in 37:41 (7:24) so way off the pace.

Sunday – Rest. YES!

Total Miles: 25.6 Miles and 11 Miles Biking. For a total of 4 hours and 7 minutes of activity!

I need to refocus this week, despite the cold and conditions and keep up the effort and hopefully hit some of the pace targets! I have also found some mathematical flaws in how I was calculating my paces for different intervals, that should help too! How was your training this week? Any thoughts or advice for me?

[tags] Half-Marathon, Training, [/tags]