Friday, June 19, 2015

Fitness Friday: Pre-race edition

Hello and Happy Friday!

Tomorrow is my first half marathon of the year, the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon. The weather is not looking too hot at the moment (90% chance of thunderstorms? Give me a break!), but I'm going to ignore it until I absolutely have to deal with it. Like...tomorrow morning. Anyway, this week was pretty laid back for me, training-wise.

Saturday - Easy pace 5 miles. Slow and steady, nothing to exciting. Average pace: 9:49.

Sunday  - rest. On Saturday we ended up going to the lake for 3 hours, so Sunday was spent inside, avoiding the sun. While none of us were lobster-red, we could all stand to take a break from the UV rays. Plus, I had a lot of house work to do.

Monday - typically a rest day for me, but I ended up doing an easy 3 miles instead. Last week was really stressful at work, and I felt like I needed to burn some Monday morning anxiety before heading in for more of the same. I somewhat succeeded, and it turned out not to be so bad of a Monday. Average pace: 9:47.

Tuesday - my first VO2 max workout. I'm not too clear on the specifics, but I read a lot about VO2 max in my running magazines. Thankfully, my training program gives nice little descriptions of each workout so I know why I'm running it.

"Defined simply, VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during exercise. It’s a combination of how much oxygen-rich blood your heart can pump and the muscles efficiency in extracting and utilizing the oxygen. Training at VO2max increases the amount of oxygen your body can use. "

So today I had to do 1 mile warm up, then 6 800m repeats at 7:45-7:55 pace, with 3 minutes of rest in between, followed by a cool down mile. I headed over to the track at 5am again, but no one else showed up. Which is okay, because then it allowed me to really concentrate. My paces for the intervals were: 7:33, 7:50, 7:46, 7:50, 7:50, & 7:50. I would say that I pretty much nailed it. :o)

Wednesday - rest & hip/lower leg strengthening exercises. 

Thursday - 3 easy miles, averaged a 9:44 pace. My last run before the half this weekend! Nothing special to note about this one. Pace was easy, the miles felt short, body is feeling good. 

Friday - rest day & traveling to Duluth for the race tomorrow. Wish me luck!

How's your training going? Any tips for running in the rain?

2 comments:

  1. Good luck tomorrow, it sounds like you are ready to run fast!

    My only strategy for running in the rain is to wear an ugly running hat. I choose ugly hats because I don't like to get nice hats wet and sweaty. Hats also stop me from wishing that windshield wipers were invented for glasses. Have fun tomorrow!

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    1. Thank you! I was thinking about spraying my glasses with Rain-X. Lol!

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