February Fun

[emily_in_nc]

17 miles, Oak...wow! I can't even imagine!

I finally ran my first 5K on the track today five weeks after my last. I had a really awful cold that just would NOT go away. Lots of coughing, congestion, malaise, and I am still building back speed and endurance, as I have lost a lot. But, I slogged through it and managed a slightly under 10 minute mile pace today. Just glad to be back... Yoga and cycling have been easier to get back to than running.

[rocknrollgirl]

Emily, running is always the hardest to get back. Sorry it took so long for your cold to clear up.


We had a great run yesterday. Normally we do not workout on Friday afternoon, but we missed our Thursday run so there you have it. We decided in spite of the snow to gear up and head out on the trails with our microspikes on. It was a bit tough going on the trails where people had walked, but once we got further into the woods and lost the foot traffic we had a blast. Tough going, but so fun.

At one point I was running along, the sun the was setting through the trees, lighting up the snow and all I could here was my breathing and the bite of my spikes in the snow. Very zen. Made for an unusual Friday Happy Hour, but I am an unusual girl!

I thought my legs would be trashed this morning, but I just got done doing some gooey yoga ( stretchy vs power ) and I am feeling pretty good.

So fun.

[OakLeaf]

RnR, that sounds wonderful!

Emily, glad you're starting to feel better. That's just miserable when a relatively minor illness drags on and on. And yeah, it seems to me that the thing about running is that you have to have a relatively high level of fitness (both general aerobic fitness and running-specific muscular fitness) for ANY running to be easy, and when something happens to drop you below that level, then it's really tough to get it back, because every run is hard.

It's only been since last year, training for my fifth marathon, that anything over 16 miles or so hasn't been automatically a slog. Now, it's a combination of things, partly that I'm keeping my volume higher year round (at least partly related to doing very little cycling), and partly that I've finally done it enough times that it isn't mentally intimidating.

So, knocked out my 20 this morning and felt good. Kept it to a pretty easy pace, but still considerably quicker than I've ever run 20 before - last year my coach had me doing my long runs extra slow, but other than that it's kind of hard to compare, since every other time (besides my first marathon, when I really didn't care about the pace) there's been either hills and/or heat and/or return from injury slowing me down. But anyway, it was good, picked it up the last couple of miles and finished at just a little slower than goal race pace. Followed it up with a nice aerial yoga class again.

Wednesday's supposed to be super hot. Better start hydrating now...

[Crankin]

It sounds like this is getting easy for you!

[OakLeaf]

Easy? Um, no ... What's the old saying? "It never gets easier, you just get faster."

I will say it feels easier in some ways than last year, certainly easier mentally, but that's because I felt like last year's plan wasn't the best for me - too much wasted effort, not to put too fine a point on it. This year I'm doing more weekly mileage AND more miles in the "meat" of my speed/strength workouts, but it's all put together very differently, and at least so far it seems like my body is responding better. The test will be in April of course!

[Crankin]

I know it's not really *easy.* But, it sounds like your training plan is better than the coach's plan.