Total Mileage: 27.4
I came into this week feeling good, after having a great race at the Fred Lebow manhattan Half. I finally felt like I could start putting more into my training again and was ready to dive into some quality workouts.
As is often my plan, I took Monday for recovery and headed to a “bend into bliss” yoga class, which focused on easy movements, release, and ended with some restorative poses. It released a lot of the tension I had in my body from the weekends running and set me up for a solid week of training.
Tuesday came, and I was ready for a morning run. There was rain in the forecast, but Kasey and I managed to get out and all the way through our run before the sky started falling. The downside, it was very dark for the whole run. But we were decked out with blinking lights that my brother had gotten us for Christmas, and of course the usual reflective gear. My legs were heavy, but it was a good run. I did a Nike Training Club core workout when I got home, in an effort to work on a little strength training. Swim on Tuesday night was all about back stroke drills, building the foundation from the bottom up.
I wanted to start to get back into the habit of track workouts being a regular occurrence, as they haven’t happened consistently since I was training for NYC last fall. So Wednesday morning Kasey and I got up a little earlier than usual, and made our way to the local high school. Once we had a mile warmup done, we broke into 400m repeats. Normally I vary the distance of the repeats I do at the track, but I wanted to ease back into things. The sun slowly rose as we did our laps, and Kasey had to be home by 7:00 to get ready for work, so when it was time for her to go I ran her home and then headed to my house to try to get another quick core workout in. I pulled up the Nike Training club app and picked a workout I had never tried before called “core countdown,” and got that done before getting ready for work.
After work I decided to head to orange theory for a class, as I have trouble fitting their classes into my schedule lately, but still want to get as much as possible out of the membership that I pay for. Since I had already done a challenging run that morning, when I got there I asked the coach if it was okay if I just did the weight room routine twice, and since there were empty slots in the class, she said that would be fine. It was a routine with a lot of rowing, and by the end of the class I had rowed over 4000 meters.
Thursday morning we were running outside again, and while the weather had been predicted to be in the low 30s, it was actually in the low 20s with a “real feel” of 13 degrees. Needless to say, it was a two layers of leggings kind of day, and I completed the look with a buff over my face. My legs were feeling the previous days workouts, but I am glad I got in my miles. Thursday night swim was a combo of laps and drills. The set of laps were 2 x [1x300, 2x150, 6x50], and then the rest of the class was once again, working on backstroke.
I took Friday as a rest day, and was ready to get moving Saturday morning. I had made plans with Kasey and a few ladies from the Merrick Bicycles Tri Team to head to a local college to get a run in, as the terrain is much more dynamic and has a lot of rolling hills. Got to vary up that training, right? I picked Kasey up just after 7 am, and we drove over to the college to meet Sami and Laura. The roads were a little bit slippery, so we were careful to watch our footing as we ran.
We started with a warmup lap in the parking lot before moving onto the main loop of the campus, where we would encounter some hills that we would love to hate. I chatted with Sami and Laura as we went around, and Kasey only flipped me off one time for dragging her out to run hills – normally we run on the south shore of Long Island, which is flat as a pancake, so this was significantly more challenging. As we made our way around the campus we added a loop around one of the parking lots, and did a quick out and back before making our way into the lot we were all parked in to make sure we got a full 6 miles in. We all managed to avoid wiping out on the patches of ice that we encountered, although I had one close call as we did that last out and back. We were exhausted when we finished, but proud that we had pushed ourselves outside of normal comfort zones. After running I got breakfast with my parents at a diner, and then spent the rest of the day working on my skirt for the princess half marathon.
My original plan for the weekend was no miles on Saturday and then 10 miles on Sunday, but when I was invited to run hills Saturday I couldn’t resist. Since my training schedule has not exactly gone according to plan up to now, I figured another switch up wouldn’t really hurt me anyway, and decided I would just run 6 miles Saturday and 6 miles Sunday. Kasey agreed to run with me both days, but we didn’t make any solid plans for Sunday in terms of what time we would run, since it was supposed to rain all morning.
When I got up Sunday it was indeed raining, and I decided to make my way to Emerge for a yin/restorative yoga class, and the hour and fifteen minutes spent relaxing with yoga props was glorious. After the class I was ready to get moving, but the rain had not lifted. Eventually the sky cleared up a bit, and Kasey and I headed outside to get a 6 mile run in. I got to try out my new hat from Momentum Jewelry, which I won through a giveaway hosted by Carlee McDot, and I loved it. It was not only cute, but a totally comfortable running hat. Our legs were a little tired from the hills on Saturday, but we easily enough got through 6 miles, and the weather was much warmer than we had been used to lately.
The weekend ended with a taco night, where Dennis hosted Kasey, Emily and me, and we watched the first thor movie as we each ate our own dinner creations. There were only four of us at dinner, yet we wound up with 3 different protein options for the tacos – ground beef for Dennis and me, Chicken for Kasey, and tofu for Emily. It was a great way to end a busy weekend, and I even got some time to work on another skirt for the princess half weekend while we watched the movie.