Total Mileage: 33.4
After an excellent long run with Kasey and Rachel on Sunday, we dedicated Monday to recovery. Rachel and I met up after work to get our legs moving with a few easy miles, and then met up with Emily at yoga. It was a chilly night, so we layered up and headed out. It was different from my usual runs in that we were outside at night, when most of my runs these days happen in the morning. But we both were decked out in reflective gear for safety, and chatted through the two miles that we got done. The yoga class that we headed to after was called "Bend into Bliss," which was a slow flow class with some restorative work. We left the class blissed out, and I was glad that I took time for recovery.
I had been house sitting for my Aunt through the weekend, and Tuesday was the final morning before I got to head home. Since I was too far away to get a morning run in with Kasey, I got a few miles in on their treadmill before taking the pup for a walk and heading to work. Tuesday night I had swim class, and we were going back to the basics with a night largely consisting of drills. It's still early in this session for swim, so we are foundation building to make sure that we are doing the strokes correctly, and this class focused mainly on back stroke, since we usually swim freestyle.
On Wednesday morning Kasey and I had tentative plans to run outside, but knowing that it was supposed to be near freezing and raining, we set alarms and decided to make a final call in the morning. When our alarms went off at 6 it was raining, so we decided to not run outside andinstead headed to Orange Theory Fitness when I got out of work. It was an endurance day, and while the treadmill block was super manageable, the weight room session involved a TON of squats, and by the end of class our legs were burnt out and we definitely had that post leg-day limp by the end of class.
Thankfully the weather was more on our side Thursday morning, and we were able to get outside to run. Both Kasey and I regretted not just sucking it up and running in the rain, but after having a cold that is lasting for weeks I am trying to play it a little safer. I was able to get in some solid pre-work mileage, running 3 with Kasey and three miles solo before heading home. As is the usual Thursday routine, I headed to swim after work, and again it was a night full of drills, focusing on kicking and backstroke.
On Friday morning, I woke up exhausted so decided to take a rest day. I'm still recovering from this never ending cold, with my voice being intermittent at best, so I listened to my body.
Come Saturday I was feeling much better, so I was glad that I took it easy on Friday. I had plans to run a half marathon on Sunday, so Saturday's plan was to take it . Rachel needed to get 10 miles in since she is going to be out of town next weekend and unable to do a higher mileage run then, so I agreed to bike along with her after I had run 6 miles. Once she got to my house we headed out and got two miles done before running by Kasey's house so she could join us. The three of us then ran 4 shared miles, and I was struggling to talk through out the run as my voice is still not at 100%, so I played some music through my phone to break up the silence. Once I hit 6 miles we looped by my house, and I hopped on Dad's bike to chase Kasey and Rachel. A mile later, Kasey decided to join me on bikes, and we both cheered Rach on as she got closer to her goal of 10 miles - soon enough she hit her goal, and I was so proud of her for going strong through all of the mileage. Even though Rachel has finished marathons, this was the furthest that she had ever run continuously, and I am so excited to get to watch her grow as a runner. While on this run we used my house for the two fuel pit stops we made, and Dad was ready to check in and cheer us on as we got the workout done.
Sunday was my big run-day for the week, as I was registered to run the Fred Lebow Manhattan Half Marathon. How did it go? Check back on Wednesday to read my race recap!
This week I finally felt like I was back on track with my running, after three weeks of missing mileage due to sickness. While my goals for the 10k portion of the fairy tale challenge may wind up being out of reach this go around, I am still going to give it my all, knowing that there will always be another race if I do not succeed this time.