Weekly Eats: Nailed it?

A weekly roundup: eats, watches, and reads.  This week my husband had the boys cook up dinner, we had incredible Mexican takeout, and I took on an advanced baking project.

Weekly Sweats: OMG!

 

Let's start with a joke: how do you know that someone just ran a virtual half marathon last week?
Answer: they'll tell you.

Weekly Eats: Ugly Cookies

A weekly round up: eats, watches, and reads.  This week we took a problem and made it into an ugly (but delicious) solution.

Weekly Sweats: A Virtual Half Marathon

In this week's adventures, 27.9 miles of running, random weight lifting activites, and all about half marathon #4.

Weekly Eats: Mandatory Dinners and Cheesecake

A weekly roundup: eats, watches, and reads.  In this week's edition, our "mandatory" dinners are keeping us happy, a rundown of our Easter, some cheesecake, and a non-Trader Joe's haul.

Weekly Sweats: Weather Report and Virtual Half Marathon Game Plan

In this week's tale, 31.25 miles, 2 two weight workouts, some complaining about the weather, and half marathon #4 game plans.

Weekly Eats: Steak Tacos, Take Out, and Life Lately

A weekly roundup: eats, watches, and reads.  Day in the life-ish edition

Weekly Sweats: a Virtual 10k!

A tale of 25 miles, a weight workout, and a virtual 10k

I'm linking up with the Weekly Run Down, please head over to Kim and Deborah to check it out.

Monday: weights and four miles easy.  But oh man I had a case of the Mondays so the easy run was quite hard.  Cause and effect here, I wasn't hungry so I didn't eat anything before my run and the tank hit empty pretty quickly.  It's crazy that up until a month ago just about all of my weekday runs were fasted and my body let me know that it has no interest in going back to the old way of doing things.

Tuesday: speed day, 6.5 miles total.  For the past few weeks I've been doing 4 x 800 and those have been going quite well so I upped my game to 4 x 1200 and hello those went quite well!  10:18,10:17, 10:09, and 10:07.  3 weeks in a row of unplanned (and very welcome) negative splits. 

Wednesday: is usually a rest day, but I planned to take Friday off so I got out for 3.25 easy miles.  I was so casual about it that I didn't realize until after I stopped running that I hadn't brought my headphones.

Thursday: 5 miles with a bit of a workout.  I did 4 x 400 just for fun.  Usually I do my speed work on a flat trail but this was a run around town so the challenge was to see how consistent I could be on different road conditions/inclines.

Friday: a pre-race rest day and I needed it.

Saturday: a virtual 10k!  As a refresher, I had zero interest in ever doing a virtual race until it became the only option and one of my favorite podcasters started a virtual race series.  Last week I did the 5k, this week was the 10k, and the half is in two weeks.

I walked up to the park with the flat trail where I do a lot of my speed work, which is very flat, a.k.a. "PR engineered".  Last week I experienced something of a fly n'die in the 5k, so I set my Garmin up to pace me this time.  My plan worked well for the first three miles, but I did struggle in the second half of the race.  I bit off more than I could chew pace wise, but that's OK.  My final result was a very nice number that I would never have believed that I could hit on my own without a race course to back me up.

Sunday: rest;-)

Random Stuff to Close Out the Week

• I love all race distances from the 5k to the half, but if you forced me to pick just one, the 10k would be it.  Before COVID-19 I would have told you that there aren't that many of them, but now I know that I can race one on my own anytime I feel like it, so that isn't a limitation anymore.
• The thing that's making me happiest right now about my speed work & the virtual races: I'm working at the top of my cardiovascular ability but not at the top of my neuromusclar ability, if that makes sense.  In the past when I've run for any length of time at the speeds I'm running at now, I've felt a lot of strain in my hips/thighs in a way that wasn't good so of course I backed off.  I feel like that limitation has cleared now.
• Related, I don't have a formal plan for my speed work/training besides doing what feels right and what I wanna do.