A Great Week of Training and My Next Trip

Well this has been a great week of training. I have been running some of my runs with my best friend and partner in life, my husband. He is in training for his first marathon - the 2008 Walt Disney World Marathon on January 13, 2008. We will be running that one together.

Since he is a foot taller than I am (with legs comparably longer) he has to run pretty slow to stay with me. This has helped him ease into training and running the longer distances. He also has been running 2 min and walking 1 (until today). So I pick up my pace a bit since I get more walking breaks. I use the mid week runs as my "interval" training.

On Tuesday I trained alone and did an easy 5 mile run (since I was still in a bit of recovery from my 21 miler on Sunday).

On Wednesday my husband and I ran 5 miles together in the evening hours (began light but dark by the time we got home). About a mile and a half from home it also started to lightly rain. It was an incredible run! The rain felt great and our pace was 11:07 min/mi with 2 min run and 1 min walk. There were moments as we ran in the dark and rain that I really felt connected to the universe! Very cool run.

Thursday was a rest day.

On Friday I trained on my own, beginnning a series of mid week training runs to help get my pace up a bit faster. I had send a note to Shirley about my concern that my running was slower this year than I was in the same point in training for Disney last fall. I wondered if I still had time to bring my pace up a bit before MCM, which is now just 5 weeks away. She told me that although I need to taper the last 3 weeks before the race, that is a reduction in mileage. I could still run some quality shorter training runs (speed work, tempo runs) all the way up until just before the race. Determined, I set out to run a faster pace for my run Friday morning.

Friday is also the closest I have come lately to not running....I almost went back to bed twice. But after reminding myself that I have never regretted getting up to run, I pushed myself out the door. I had a great 5 mile run, aided by a 173 bpm Podrunner mix. Although the heart rate was high (this I expected), I ran it at a 10:24 min/mi pace. This is much better than my pace has been of late. So I will continue to work that.

Today I did my weekly long run since I will be leaving on a business trip tomorrow to Sioux Falls, SD - where I will be teaching a PM class for a couple of days. I am on a step back week while my husband was scheduled for a 12 miler - his longest ever training run. We decided to run it together. We would run 3 min and walk 1 min. We had trouble getting up early today so we ran it late this afternoon - leaving the house around 4:30 pm with the plan to be home around 7 pm.

We had a great run! I felt a bit tired out about mid way through but caught a second wind around 10 miles and actually sped up. Meanwhile my hubby, who had been keeping his pace slow to run with me, was starting to feel the miles toward the end and had to work to keep up with me :-) We finished our 12 miles in 2:28:28, a 12:22 min/mile pace.

Tomorrow, if I am feeling up to it, I may run a few miles on a local trail that runs right by the hotel...maybe 3 junk miles to get my total over 30 :-). I am planning to run Mon evening and Tues evening. Temps on both days are going to be in the upper 60s (I am in heaven!).