Fitness Friday

Saturday -  Rest day. Which included laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, and pulling out all my fall decorations. So much for "rest".

Sunday - 12 miles easy. I was 99% certain that this was going to be on the treadmill, but I lucked out. I still had to run in the rain a little bit, but after 2ish miles the rain stopped. Unfortunately, we received so much rain the previous day and night that there was water in our basement. So that may have been a motivating factor to get me out the door. Yes, I did leave Travis to deal with the mess, but it really is a one-man job. The day was super humid, but overall it wasn't a bad run. I ran into a runner friend around mile 7 so we stopped to chat for a couple of minutes. By the time I got home, I was feeling pretty good. Average pace: 9:48.

Monday - Rest day. I really wanted to ride our bikes to the park for a picnic, but Trav's back wasn't feeling great (probably from all the mopping), so we drove there and had a picnic instead. Eh, sometimes a break from exercise is ok.

Tuesday - Alternating tempo run: 1 mile warm up, 6 miles alternating pace (8:40, 8:15, 8:40, 8:15, 8:40, 8:15), 1 mile cool down. I got up really early to get this run in, but my body had different ideas and it took awhile to get out of the house. Fortunately, I got this run in, showered, and was still at work by 7:30. That's pretty speedy! I was a little intimidated by this run, mainly for holding the 8:15 pace, but I actually did pretty well. Even with some inclines. Paces were: 9:24, 8:36, 8:13, 8:39, 8:17, 8:34, 8:16, 10:05.

Wednesday - A nice, easy 3 miles. Only 3 miles! It was like I blinked and the run was over. Even better - the temp was only 45 degrees. So nice! I did hear a report that a woman was attacked yesterday morning while out running, right after she split up with a friend. She's ok, and while she did report it to the police, they don't have any leads on the guy. So I made sure to run with my runner's mace actually on my wrist, where it's supposed to be, rather than in my fuel belt pocket. It pisses me off that I even have to think about this, but that's the world we live in I guess.

Thursday - Supposed to cross train on the bike today, but I was up too late and had too much fun at book club. Ah well, rest is good too!

Friday - Easy 3 miles. It was downright chilly this morning, but I'm not complaining! I am going to complain about my Garmin losing satellite and throwing off my pace and time. When I got home and uploaded the data into my computer, the map said that I started about 5 miles away from my house in the middle of no where. Uhm, yea Garmin...get it together. Thankfully it was just an easy run on a familiar route so no harm, no foul.

This weekend is a peak running weekend in my training. I have scheduled a steady state run of 6 miles tomorrow, and then 16-18 miles on Sunday with marathon surges. That's when you do 90 sec at 5k pace, rest at marathon pace for 5 min, repeat, somewhere around the middle to tail end of your run. Mile 9 for me, specifically. The weather is supposed to be really nice, so I'm looking forward to it all. Hopefully I survive!

How's your training going? How do you stay safe while running?