Week 3 is officially in the books. A couple deviations from plan this week as I work through more races that I had on my calendar before starting training, but a productive week for me!
Sunday 8/20: Planned - Rest / Actual - Rest
Still out of town for the eclipse - we slept in after a late night after our long drive on Saturday and nighttime run, and then spent all day at the Wilson County Fair. Still hit my 15k step goal and didn't eat every single overindulgent fried thing within sight, so - win!
Monday 8/21: Planned - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 30 minutes @ Z2(ish) + 9:12 cooldown (3 miles)
Eclipse day! We goofed off around the house all day and enjoyed totality and then went out to dinner where we saw about the only after-effects of being in a town on the path of the eclipse. Dinner took quite a long time, but was incredibly delicious, so worth it in the long run! We walked around a bit afterwards eating ice cream and explored the town, and found the other end of the path that connected to Don Fox Park!
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| Totality in Tennessee! |
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| Super garlicky amazingness. I need this in my life more often! |
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| Beautiful sunset, especially if you can ignore the stupid Confederate monument :\ |
In the evening we went back to run but kept it simple since this was a short, easy one.
Tuesday 8/22: Planned - Intervals: 10 minutes warmup + (5 minutes @ Z4, 1.5 minute @ Z2) x 4 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - Intervals: 10 minutes warmup + (5 minutes @ Z4, 1.5 minute @ Z2) x 5 + 6:17 cooldown (3.5 miles)
This was our last day in town and we were planning on heading out by noon and knew we probably wouldn't have time to run later, so morning it was! It was incredibly hot (hence all the nighttime running on previous days) but since it was light we at least took the opportunity to explore the rest of the path that we'd discovered the night before. Since we'd just run about 12 hours earlier my legs weren't feeling their best at first, but I got warmed up (ha) all right and this workout was actually pretty good overall.
And! For anyone who knows about the Barkley Marathons - it takes place in eastern Tennessee at Frozen Head State Park. Which was conveniently an option for our return route! I don't think Mike or I will ever try to run it, but we enjoyed watching the Netflix documentary and keep up with the annual reports in April when the race happens. So we did a little research and later that day, we got to visit the yellow gate of infamy! There was no sign of Laz, the race director, but we did find a decomposing cigarette butt on the gate post, and wondered if it might have been left behind from this past year's race... this area is actually a pretty nice campground and absolutely beautiful park so we're considering bringing our camping stuff if we ever come this way again.
Wednesday 8/23: Planned - 45 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 45 minutes @ Z2 + 5:07 cooldown (3.5 miles)
Wednesday was a bit of a gamble! We had picked an airbnb to crash in after getting out of Frozen Head and getting cell reception, and so didn't have a really specific plan for how this day's run was getting completed. Our other goal for the day was to get to Pittsburgh, and we got moving around 10AM so it was going to be a bit of a haul from very southern Virginia. Midafternoon, Mike mentioned we should probably look for somewhere to run (it would break up the rest of the drive nicely) but we were kind of out in the middle of nowhere and driving towards some minor waypoints without phone service.
You can imagine our surprise when this tiny (and I do mean tiny) town we were driving through not five minutes later has a big "Community Trail" sign right along the road, and a nicely paved path that people were actively using! We circled the block and found the parking lot, and then I did a bit of contortion to change into my gear in the back seat of the car. It was sunny but there was a nice cool breeze in the valley, and much less humidity than in TN, plus it was at least ten degrees cooler, so it was a much more pleasant run than the day before! Three loops of the path ended up being about 5K so I was able to finish that and a little more to meet my time goal for the day.
Thursday 8/24: Planned - Rest / Actual - Rest
I've been using Thursdays as gym days, but after our very late return on Wednesday night I had some real-life stuff to catch up on, and not a lot of sleep, so I decided that a real rest day would be juuuust fine.
Friday 8/25: Planned - Intervals/Hills: 10 minutes warmup + (6 minutes @ Z4, 2 minutes @ Z2) x 3 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 47:11 @ Z2(ish)
Decided to deviate from the plan here since Saturday was going to be a race (with hills!) instead of my planned long run and I wanted to get at least a little more of that Z2 time in for the week. First run back home and it felt good to be back, even though I had fun running in new and sometimes unplanned places while I was away!
Saturday 8/26: Planned - 80 minutes @ Z2, 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - Run Around the Square 5K - 31:33 (3.1 miles)
This is my third consecutive year running this race, and my only real goal was to continue to improve my time. The first time I ran it I had no idea what to expect, and the first mile is flat and has tons of course support and even various musical groups! So I did a 9:00 mile and ended up with a finish time of 39:37. Yikes. It didn't help that mile 2 is basically straight uphill and on trails, and mile 3 is one last small uphill and then a huge downhill, also on trails. I learned from my mistakes and last year I turned in a 32:14. As is becoming usual with my repeat races this summer (since I'm still heavier than last year by 10-15 lbs), I wasn't sure what to expect, so a finish of 31:33 was super pleasing! Not at all the equivalent of the training run I was supposed to do, but a worthwhile deviation to me.
Weekly Total Time: 3:30:24 (down 25 minutes from Week 2)
Weekly Total Distance: 16.2 (down .55 from Week 2)
Weight Lost: About 1 pound, which is awesome since I was eating a lot less strictly than I normally would be. It's hard to make an effort on vacation, but worth it!
Next week: Week 4 - back to the grind!
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