August Training Recap

August was a good month for me, training-wise. My body feels strong, I don’t feel tired throughout the day (unless it was a long run that morning), and I have a positive attitude about my upcoming races. I’m really looking forward to my two half marathons. The first one – Volition America Half Marathon – is going to be pretty small with around 600 people, so not sure how that will go. My mom may do the 5k which will be awesome! The great thing about this race is that I’m planning to do one of my remaining long runs on part of the course, so I’ll know what to expect on race day.

The Good: 

• Ran a total of 83.5 miles, with an average of 19 miles per week. One week had 25 miles, my biggest mileage week so far.
• I got strength training or yoga in at least once per week.
• Several long runs gave me a chance to find out what mid-run nutrition works for me (Honey Stinger chews!) and what clothes I would like to wear for my race.

The Weird:

• I switched from a Sunday long run to a Saturday long run, so one week technically had two long runs. Thankfully the second long run was a cutback week run, so it wasn’t too overwhelming.
• It’s been 100% humidity nearly all month, which means you basically feel like Ariel when you’re trying to breathe. It also means your sweat doesn’t evaporate as quickly which means you stay overheated longer. Looking forward to the humidity going down these next months (though not looking forward to cooler weather. boo.)
• Tiny bit of knee pain at the end of longer runs, but I am correcting this with lots of glute and hip strengthening!

To Improve:

• I tended to skip the second 3 miler of the week, due to scheduling issues or other excuse. It doesn’t feel as important to me. My goal for August is to see the importance (maybe I will treat it as a recovery run or to shake out my legs before the weekend long run) so I will be motivated to stick to it. Especially with my race so close, I want to get all the benefits out of my plan that I can.

Goals for September:

• Increase strength training to at least twice per week, focusing on core and glutes/hips (prime injury prevention zones, ya’ll)
• I want to work on eliminating walk breaks, especially from my shorter runs. I need to work on my mental game. While there is nothing WRONG with taking walk breaks (US Olympic runner and famous running coach Jeff Galloway is an advocate for them), mine are usually because of mental weakness and not physical. Maybe I need to come up with a mantra to power me through…
• Focus on finishing my first training cycle with excellence! This includes abundant sleep (7 hours nightly for me), awareness of my nutrition (especially focusing on getting enough protein), and completing every run in the plan with purpose.
• Run my first half marathon!!!

Weekly Run Review – 6 weeks of training left!

My first half marathon is in six weeks! Yaaasss!! Also OMG!!!

Let’s get right in to it. My week of training has looked like this:

Sunday Long Run – 9 miles. Hot, very sweaty, took a new route which was nice. There were like 3 highway overpasses I had to climb, so those sucked, but that’s as close as I can get to hills in Florida so I’m thankful for the muscle-building they provide. I started out at 7 am which is later than I like, but there was a decent breeze throughout the whole run so I didn’t die as much as I thought I would. Got honked at a LOT more than usual. One guy even leaned out his window to stare me down and smile at me. Like, is that supposed to work? You look like a super-creep. Go home and tell your mother what you’ve done.

Monday – Did some strength training for hips, glutes, and core for about 20 minutes. I want to incorporate this at least twice a week to keep my form strong and to protect from injury. Also abs would be nice, can’t lie. Here’s a nice lil graphic of the yoga sequence I do as part of my strength workout:

Sun Salutations – includes lunges, downward dog, and a yoga push-up. You can hold any pose a little longer to focus on strengthening a muscle group.

Tuesday 3 mi – HOT. Let’s just get used to the fact that every run in Florida will be hot until like, after Thanksgiving. And then I’ll complain that it’s cold because I haaaAAaaAAaaaAAAAAaate being cold. At least I’ll be faster in the cold. 🙂 Anyway, I did this one without my phone so I have no idea what my pace was, but it felt hard. Maybe because of the heat, or maybe because I was going faster than usual, probably both.

Thursday 5 mi – I treated this 5 miler as a sort of tempo run (thank you to Runner’s World for their awesome definitions of different types of runs), Mile 1 was a warm up jog, Mile 2 at race pace, Mile 3 at easy recovery pace, Mile 4 race pace, and Mile 5 easy recovery pace. It was a fun little workout! I haven’t done any runs like this yet so it was fun to change up my pace. Made the miles go by very quickly.

Side note: I have become sort of a professional at stopping in random buildings to go to the bathroom. One day I’ll learn to go before I leave the house. So far I’ve stopped in two different 7-Elevens, the YMCA, and random side-of-the-road porta potties. Not sure how safe that last option is, but when you gotta go, you gotta GO.

Friday 3 mi – Shamefully skipped this run because I was tired. I knew I’d be on my feet all day Saturday because my sisters and I went to St. Augustine for a birthday celebration, and I didn’t want to get too tired for my long run….but let’s be real, it was a lazy moment.

St. Augustine was great though. You can see how gorgeous my sisters are if you hop over to my Insta.

The picture below really spoke to me this week. I read a lot of runner-blogs and most of them are women who have been running for years and have completed 10 or 20 marathons! Their paces hover between 6:30 and 8:30 per mile. It’s easy to get discouraged with my sorta-difficult 10 minute per mile pace, but I know it’s all about progress and it’s about my personal journey to my goals. I learned this week that one of the bloggers (here) ran her first marathon several years ago in over 5 hours, which is an 11:45 pace, and now she has run the Boston Marathon, which is about an 8 minute pace! So progress is definitely possible with consistency and a whole lot of determination.