A Great Training Week

Last week was (you guessed it) a pretty great training week and for only 2 reasons. The first reason would be my 5.2 mile run on Tuesday. Fleet Feet Sports started a Tin Roof Tuesday running group with a great little 5 mile course.

The last time I ran 5 miles it took around 1:09 (now do you believe me when I say I'm slow?) which I was pretty happy with particularly because I felt great when I finished and hadn't run that distance in quite a while. This run was also with my sister which made it really fun and kept it motivating but I decided to push a bit more than normal. It had been a rough couple of workouts leading up to this one so it was really important to me that I had a good run. I wish it was always as easy as just wanting it to happen. Well when we finished I checked the watch and to my surprise and delight, it said 1:06! To those in the running or any other endurance sport world, shaving 3 minutes off your time for a particular distance (especially when you actually added a bit to that distance) is a damn big deal! That was a generalization, maybe it's not a big deal to everyone, but it should be and to me it totally was. I was so super excited about it and even though we were the last ones back we were actually the slowest of the distance group which means not the slowest overall! There were people who did shorter distances AND were running behind me. Not to mention my first mile split was in the 10:30 range. Not sure why I've suddenly been unable to contain myself in my first miles but hopefully I can remedy that soon. Regardless, I felt so great after my run that I put on my slippers and forced The Colonel to take a picture and keep taking pictures until I looked skinny. Luckily, the second take worked.



So Wednesday I was a bit sore but thought a good bike ride would shake those muscles loose a little as well as work some new ones. I was also a bit delirious after reading all of the race reports from my favorite bloggers about Ironman 70.3 Augusta so I mapped a 10.2 mile bike ride through Seneca for after work.

This ride was a bitch. No short about it. It was an absolutely beautiful day and there's no reason this ride was hard other than I was just tired. It got so bad that as I was cruising past my car on my way out to the second lap I literally stopped my watch and got off my bike. I was ready to pack it up. But then I really thought about it and I had really spent my whole day thinking about this 10 mile ride, there was no way I could just stop. Now let's remember that my last 10 mile ride was literally over a month ago during the Go Girl Tri so I really wasn't expecting anything spectacular. It was also my first real ride on my new bike so I was riding cautiously, not to mention that my bike handling skills really aren't so great since I'm a beginner and I decided to ride some hills that had a history of leaving me in tears. All of those things combined left me not expecting much in terms of the time department. During the race I did my 10 miles in just over an hour, maybe 1:01 and this time I finished up at 56:13. Again, improvement. I'm most proud of this ride because I really really really didn't want to do it. I wanted to quit and give up and go home and eat klondike bars but I didn't! Another thumbs up day. This week considering a 12-15 mile ride. Who knows.