This week I’m breaking one of my training rules that I’m always going on about, I’m running the Navy 10k! Racing while training isn’t a great idea because it can take too much out of the tank. I signed up for it thinking I would go for a PR but now I’m not so sure, read on to see what happened on the big day. This week was nothing really special, no rain, not terribly hot but we were working a bit further from home making for long days here and there. I still didn’t get to training until the weekend but what else is new.
Friday: We had a late start and a short day on Friday and even though it was pretty hot I decided to knock out my long run. Since I have a race on Sunday that will be my speedwork and I was getting a little stressed since I knew that I needed a day between a 16 km long run and 11 k of speed work. But it came together. I was also a bit freaked out by the length 16 km always seems to loom as a big number plus my last two long ones have kinda sucked. This one went way, way better though. I didn’t quite feel like I could run forever at the end but I knocked off 5 really fast km. I was actually starting to worry that all my long runs and the race were going to suck like that and that’s no fun. But this run was pretty dang good and I’m starting to feel better about this whole operation.
That’s one reason I like writing training updates is that you end up writing down your thoughts about your runs as they happen. I went back and read last year’s training updates for half training but it turns out that’s when I was sick. A bit over a year later all I remember is running 24 km and thinking that maybe it WAS time to start thinking about a full. Now next time I’m half training I can read back and remind myself that at 16k it did start to get better. I’m not saying you have to start a blog where you dive into the minutia of every run but a paper training journal might not be a bad idea.
Sunday: I ran the Navy 10k on Sunday morning. Actually first I did the 1.25k with my niece and it was a bit of a win lose win situation. The longest she’s done so far is a 100m dash so this one was pretty epic. I did carry her most of the way but she actually ran rather than walked a small portion of it for the first time too! She had a fancy party to attend later with mommy and her friends and she refused to put on an of her party dresses choosing instead to stay in her race shirt and wear her medal. So I decided to call that my warm up.
I was a bit conflicted as to whether I should go for that PR in my 10k later in the day since this was my speed work for the week. On one hand it was in sight on the other my last two weeks of half training before the taper is like right now. Did I really want to empty the tank at the Navy 10k? When I’ve said in the past just go fast-ish, even at park run, I go for it all the way. But these things have a way of working themselves out don’t they? Long story short I ran the first 5k loop with my new running buddy Dominic but you’ll have to read the re-cap on Sunday to find out what that’s all about. The second loop I ran by myself and quite fast, so there is a chance that record will be broken in the fall still. I had lots of fun and it was a great event.
And that’s it for the week. I canceled a run this week because well I don’t really have a reason it wasn’t terribly busy this week but I needed a day off after my race and we have a really busy next week coming up. We’ll be close to home but we’re expecting (maybe) some house guests so I plan on front end loading my long and hard runs this week. Truthfully I spent all of Monday cleaning the upstairs. Like totally cleaning it, right down to the screens and the siding from the porch roof in preparation. Next week I’ll let you all know how this week’s training went and post in the comments if you’re doing you’re 1/2 or full or whatever training along with me! You can download my bare minimum 1/2 marathon training plan here!
Sweat Sweetly 