Week 7 and a Look Ahead to Week 8

Hello faithful reader(s),

Last week's training schedule had me doing runs during the week of about 4.5 miles with a dreaded weekend run of 7 miles.  I was a little worried after my first run on Tuesday because I woke up the next day with that same left knee pain that I've had in the past (which started after the half marathon earlier this year).  I wasn't sure if I should even run the rest of the week, but I figured I would just keep wearing my knee brace and see how far I could go on Thursday's run.  I did take it a little easier on myself, running only 4.16 miles instead of the given 4.5 miles but since I ran 4.91 miles on Tuesday, I thought the two runs probably averaged out to about 4.5 miles and I was fine.

The training schedule I'm following, courtesy of Hal Higdon

I have to admit, I haven't been following the training schedule to the letter doing all of the in between runs but I do try to get at least two runs in during the week with the long run on the weekend.  I've also been trying to play tennis with Rob as my cross-training activity.  I'm not trying to kill myself here, just have fun, get in shape and enjoy the experience!  Last year during my training, I would follow everything on the schedule exactly as it was written but I found that I kind of got burned out on it come holiday time and ended up not as in shape as I wanted to be for the Princess Half Marathon.

This year, once I complete the half marathon in November, I will still have the half in January to keep preparing for, giving me further incentive to keep training through the holidays!  I'm really looking forward to that since it will, hopefully, help keep the holiday weight gain to a minimum. Ah the things us women have to think about sometimes!  I also thought of a totally awesome bonus for the January 12 half marathon!!  Rob's birthday is on January 9, so we'll most likely be celebrating the weekend of the half marathon and probably on the Saturday of the race.  You know what that means!!  I will have SO MANY extra calories that I've burned from the race, I'll just happen to be able to give myself a freebie day on whatever I eat and drink!  (Though, honestly, I probably would've anyway...I mean, it's 13 freaking miles!  I think I will deserve it!)

I've been really lucky this past week as the weather has been completely gloomy and wonderful!  That has really helped to keep the heat down in the afternoons which has helped me to improve my times!  I changed up my routine a little bit by running for two minutes now and then walking for 1 minute.  This has helped me to reach an average pace of about a minute quicker than my previous runs!  It also helped me run my fastest 5K ever last Tuesday!  I got home from running and ended the run on my Nike+ watch and it started flashing and beeping excitedly at me in honor of the accomplishment.  There's certainly something satisfying about that little acknowledgment!  I love this watch!  I was hoping to be able to link to my Nike+ profile on here so that you could see all my runs, times, etc...but I can't figure it out.  It seems like it will only post (easily, that is) to either Facebook or Twitter.  Perhaps I'll check on that some more and figure it out at some point!

In other news, today was a fantastic day for fundraising!!  Steff and I have reached 30% of our fundraising goal with a total of $570 raised so far and it's only October!  I am so excited about this and very thankful to everyone donating!

Here's the link to our fabulous fundraising page: Team Steph B. and Steff S.

Here are my runs by the numbers for this past week:

Tuesday

Total Distance: 4.91 miles
Total Time: 1 hr
Average Pace: 12:20 per mile

Thursday

Total Distance: 4.16 miles
Total Time: 53 mins
Average Pace: 12:41 per mile

Sunday

Total Distance: 7.04 miles
Total Time: 1 hr, 28 mins
Average Pace: 12:28 per miles

For all of you keeping track of energy gel reviews, here's my review of the new Gu Roctane formulation, flavored Cherry-Lime: It tastes nothing like Cherry, nor Lime.  It tastes like Chocolate actually, but a weird Chocolate not a good Chocolate, and I have independent confirmation of this from Rob.

As for the Gu Roctane Tropical Fruit flavor, that was actually pretty good.  Though, I will caution everyone to avoid spilling it throughout your living room, kitchen and dining areas as I apparently clumsily did.  I STILL have NO IDEA how that happened and I didn't even realize it until later that day, when I stepped in something sticky with my shoe and saw the trail of goo that I had created.  Needless to say, cleanup was not fun!!  So, my friends, do NOT do that!  Getting back to the flavor of the gel, I will say that it wasn't overpowering but somewhat fruity and pretty yummy.  In my book, it's up there with the Orange flavor Gu and the Berry flavor Gu.     

Looking ahead, I'm going to be out of town Thursday - Saturday so I'm wondering when I'll get my runs in this week.  I didn't think about it until now (which is too late), but I really should've gone running today.  I figured I should just let myself recover from yesterday's 7 miler.  Whoopsies.  So I'll run tomorrow and maybe I'll just have to do another run on Wednesday.  The problem with where we're going is that it's a small barrier island on Florida's west coast and I'm not really sure where I can run.  The place has a gym which has a treadmill, but I LOATHE the dreadmill...er, treadmill.  I get so very bored and I just don't think I would be able to force myself to eek out a 4.5 mile run let alone the 8 miler I'm supposed to do this weekend! I'll have to do more research I suppose, to figure out if running there will be a possibility.  I'm really looking forward to the trip though!  It's to my absolute favorite place: Siesta Key!!  I truly love it there, it's so beautiful and the beaches are seriously awesome!  Hopefully this time there won't be a hurricane to spoil the trip like there was when we went in August.  Stay away tropical weather!!

This is what I get to look forward to:

Aaaaaaaahhh