Weekly Sweats: Mole Fitness

 

Thanks to winter, it was a "mole fitness" week, meaning that all of my workouts took place underground.  28.1 miles of running, three weight workouts, and assorted yoga and stretching ensued.

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

In a perfect world I would have been able to pick up my fitness journey from where I left it last week with the mix of easy running and speed workouts.  As it was, we have a lot of ice and a lot of cold with more of both on the way so I had to take it inside and adapt things to the treadmill.  Happily, my body was on board with the indoor miles.  And don't worry, thanks to the dog we have plenty of outside/fresh air time on our two daily walks so it's all good.

Monday: weights and 4.3 slow paced miles.  Doing an easy run outside where I just relax and let things happen is a world of difference between doing an easy run on the treadmill where I push the "5" button for speed and spend the next 50 minutes resisting the urge to change things.

Tuesday: 5 miles at 5.5 pace, which is my "everyday" treadmill speed.  I didn't feel like doing speed on the treadmill so I didn't.

Wednesday, weights, no running

Thursday: 5.3 miles!  Again, just steady state 5.5 pace.  Let me repeat something that I've said before about treadmill running: I TAKE BREAKS.  Generally speaking if I'm running outside it's pretty rare for me to pause the Garmin.  I mean yes if I need to wait to cross a street (sometimes I'm so wrapped up in running that I need to stop to make sure that I'm making a logical rather than an emotional decision if it's safe to cross), and if it's really hot I also might pause for a minute here and there, but overall it's not common.  The treadmill is a whole different ball game, and I'd say for more mental than physical reasons, I need to take a pause here and there.  The highlight of this run was that I was able to make it to 2.6 miles before my first break.

P.S. my mental game on the treadmill is all about getting through the lap that I'm in...I'm not there to run 5 miles I'm just there to watch the lap tracker get through the next lap and then I do it all over again.

Friday: 4.25 miles of running at an easy pace with weights later in the day.  This run felt much easier than Monday's slo-mo and thanks for asking I again made it to 2.6 miles before my first break.

P.P.S. You can read into whether I'm going by treadmill distance or Garmin distance by whether the run ends at x.25 or x.30 miles...ultimately I always go by treadmill distance but if it's x.25 then the Garmin and treadmill are "close enough"...if the runs ends at x.30 miles that means that the Garmin was lagging so I went by the treadmill and adjusted the difference in all my various running apps.  Strava only lets you manually enter tenths of a mile and heaven forbid that I would ever log a x.25 mile run as an x.2 or x.3

Saturday: 6 miles!  And thanks for asking, this time I made it 3.1 miles before my first break, which is a really good sign.

Sunday: 3.25 miles at slow pace, no breaks!

What's Next?

I guarantee you that I will be sticking to my strength training plan like glue next week because it's a prescribed rest week!  The end of each phase of the plan is a rest week, which will also help to to execute one of my running goals for the year, which is to take regular cutback weeks.  I've just done three weeks of pretty high-for-me mileage and I feel great BUT I'm going to take a week to rest on my laurels and do short, easy runs.  Knowing that the last week of January was going to be an easy week really motivated me to push it up til now.

See you next week!  Happy miles everyone!!!