A solid training week, and 8 miles tomorrow!

Well this week went as scheduled. I did my Strength Training on Monday and Wednesday, which went pretty well. I am beginning to see some muscle definition in my arms and legs (no major 'gun shows' yet) which makes me feel good and at least gives me a visual clue that all this work is actually having results. :)

Tuesday was a nice outdoor run in the early morning for 3.6 miles at a 10:30 pace. It felt good and my breathing and cadence seemed to stay pretty consistent. I'll take this kind of run any day! Did some good stretching afterwards and didn't have any pain during or after the run. It is so nice not to have those aches in my hamstring anymore.

Thursday was another rainy morning so I had to resort to the Treadmill for my Striders. This time I ran the intervals at a 10:00 pace for 90 sec seconds, followed by 1 minute at a 12:00 pace. I did two sets of 4 with a 5-minute easy run between the two sets. I think I am going to keep the interval pace at 10:00 for the next 3 weeks and just continue to increase the time/distance for the next month or so. Then depending upon how that feels, I will change the pace to 9:30 for another 3 weeks. By then, I will be ready to start tapering down.

Friday was a rest day. It was so awesome to 'sleep in' today and leisurely get up and get ready for work. I was thinking of going to the jacuzzi in the morning but the bed was just too warm to leave!

Finishers tech shirt for Chicago Police 5KI picked up my race packet for the Chicago Police 5K Foot Chase today. Bib #367. I had to go to the Police Training and Education building in Chicago. There was NO Parking anywhere -- everything was permit parking. I finally found a place near a park about 3 blocks away. Walking into the building was kinda weird. Police in halls, etc. Kinda felt like an episode of America's Most Wanted, and I was going to be mistaken for a hoodlum or something. LOL I got my packet with no problems, of course. The tech shirt is totally awesome! Can't wait to finish the race and be able to do my run training with this nice long-sleeved shirt!

Tomorrow is my LSR -- 8 miles. This is the longest run I have taken to-date. This may be the first run where I will have to bring fueling with me because at my LSR pace, this is going to take me at least 1.5 hours to complete. I think I am going to try a GU for this run -- run for 45 minutes, take the GU with water, and then run for another 45 minutes. I want to see how this works for me. Up until now, my runs haven't really been long enough to bring anything along other than water. The weather is going to be chilly -- mid to upper 30s -- so I will also be testing out my layering choices to see if they keep me comfortable for the longer run.

Given that my week started Sunday with the Pumpkin Stampede 5K, my total miles for this week is going to be 18. The weekly miles continue to climb upward. Woo Hoo!

Cross Training and Striders this week

Monday was a strength training day with TEAM Fitness! I did not do any strength training last week because my body was a little tired from the running, and I wanted to be able to run the Chicago AIDS Run on Saturday. It was a good workout! We started with a lot of core work -- planks and sit-ups of multiple variety -- which I know that I need, but boy were the abs complaining!

Then, we did our circuit which was focused on the upper body this time. Oh my gosh! Lats, biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest... they were all burning by the time we were done! Have you ever had to do bicep curls while having to balance yourself on a metal beam? Well, this was my first time. It was tough having to concentrate on multiple muscle groups at the same time. But I figure that for running, this might be a good exercise because balance is an important thing to work on, right? Boy, missing two days of TEAM Fitness is not a good thing!

Striders!

This week marks something new for my Half Marathon training program. I start doing striders during my Tuesday runs. Meghan had me do two sets of an interval program where (after warming up) I run for 30 seconds at a fast pace, then slow to a regular pace for 1 minute, then repeat three more times. That is one 'set'. Then I run for 5 minutes and begin the entire set again. Then run for 5 minutes and then cool down.

So I did that today for the first time. The first set was difficult because I was still trying to figure out how to do this using my Polar watch to signal the interval changes while still tracking all the activity for the entire run. I was switching between different exercise profiles which was a pain. And, then I realized for the first set, that I was running hard for 1 minute and resting for 30 seconds (the opposite of what I was supposed to be doing). Ugh!

The second set worked out much better! I figured out how to track this and use the watch properly for the intervals. By the time I was all done, I had run for 3.1 miles and completed the entire thing in 42 minutes. Not bad! My right knee hurt just a tad but later on it felt fine. So I reported my experience to Meghan to get her feedback.

She called me back a few hours later to tell me that I had run way too fast! You see, I thought the 30-second fast pace was supposed to be a 'sprint'. WRONG! It was only supposed to be at my 5K pace or a tad more but definitely not a sprint! I was running at a 7:00 pace for those sprints and I didn't even need to! Well I guess that it is why my knee was bothering me towards the end. So, now I know that the 30-second run segment should be more like a 10:00 pace (much easier). I guess if there was one good thing about this morning, it was the knowledge that I 'could' run at a 7:00 pace (for short spurts at least).

My weekend is going to be so crazy busy that I am going to have to adjust my training runs so that I do my regular maintenance run on Thursday, but move up my Long Slow Run from Saturday to Friday morning. I also have my CardioPoint scheduled for Friday morning. So I will do the CardioPoint first, then rest for 30 minutes, then do my 6.5 mile LSR. My schedule for Saturday and Sunday are literally full from 7AM to 8PM each day. So I will have two rest days this weekend.

Race Schedule Change

Last week, I found a 5K race that looked like so much fun I had to sign up. It is in Chicago and is sponsored by the Chicago Policy Memorial Fund -- the support agency for families of fallen police officers. They race is a fundraiser for the fund so that is definitely a worthy cause. I like the name: "The Chicago Police Department 5K Foot Chase". I wonder if they will let the runners go first, and then have police officers running behind us like a real foot chase! That would be awesome! (As long as they aren't carrying batons or anything... LOL just kidding!)

I signed up for another race today. Yes, I must be addicted to this running thing! Well, I was supposed to run a 5K race at LifeTime Fitness on November 24th and a Turkey Trot 5K on the 26th. I figured I would 'bracket' my Thanksgiving Day feasting with two runs to help prevent me from gaining too much weight. LOL (And the runs fit into my training plan in terms of distance/effort so it seemed perfect).

Then I found the North Shore Turkey Trot 5K on November 24th. What a cool race! And their goodie bag has some awesome stuff, including a nice black fleece running jacket! Hmmm... this was a no-brainer -- I gotta go with the timed race and the jacket, right? Sorry, LifeTime. I love you but I gotta go with the swag.on this one. :)

A new watch!

Oh! Guess what? I had a nice surprise on Friday afternoon. A marketing person from Polar USA sent me an email saying that I was picked in a raffle to win a free Polar Training Computer of my choice! When they published the article about me on their Polar People site, they automatically put my name into a monthly raffle. And I won! So I have a new RS800CX RUN watch coming to me in the mail this week. I am very excited! Now all I have to do is figure out how to use it! My current watch is a Polar RS300X... I guess it will be relegated to 'backup status' now.