Another one in the books - here's how Week 5 went!
Sunday 9/3: Planned - Rest / Actual - Rest
One of our friends was hosting a brunch gathering at her house, largely with folks who were also at the board games gathering the day before. So many carbs! I tried to moderate my intake and it went pretty well. Rest of the day was a lot of catching up on meal prep, etc. so nothing too exciting. Nice to have a quiet day once in a while!
Monday 9/4: Planned - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 30 minutes @ Z2(ish) + 19:30 cooldown (3.4 miles)
Mike and I were both off for Labor Day, so we planned on running together. It was a really nice day so we headed out to the Montour Trail (or so we thought - later on we found out we were just on a connector!) and I kept wanting to see what was up along the next section of trail so this one got extended a bit compared to what the plan called for. Not sure I would necessarily go out of my way to run this particular bit again as it somehow managed to be uphill both ways for long stretches (hard to manage heart rate on Z2 runs, anyhow) and there wasn't much to see. It was quite pretty and warm and the company was enjoyable, so still overall a win!
Tuesday 9/5: Planned - Intervals: 10 minutes warmup + (4 minutes @ Z4, 1 minute @ Z2) x 6 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - Rest
Woke up around 3 AM to extremely loud thunderclaps, and when my alarm went off at 5:45 there was still rain and a bit of lingering yellow on the radar, so I extended my long weekend for an hour instead of going out and getting drenched before work. I didn't actually manage to get back to sleep, because I realized that my favorite author's new book was out and available on my Kindle app, and I ended up getting a good head start on that - there were a few rumbles of thunder so I didn't feel too bad about it!
Wednesday 9/6: Planned - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 10 minutes warmup + (4 minutes @ Z4, 1 minute @ Z2) x 6 + 6:03 cooldown (3.5 miles) AND 30 minutes @ Z2 + 13:57 cooldown (3 miles)
Tuesday evening was already spoken for, so I decided that Wednesday I would attempt my very first doubles day! I decided to get the "tougher" workout out of the way in the morning.
Mike offered to join me for my Wednesday evening run, so I agreed to meet him at Frick Park, which is conveniently between our houses. While I was waiting for him in the car I heard the most bizarre noises behind me, and when I looked in my rearview mirror I spotted... a man walking a pig on a leash!
I've actually heard of this guy before, but this is the first time I've ever seen him. I think most of the people in the parking lot had stopped to watch, including the ladies who ended up in that picture. Pretty surreal! Mike pulled up right as I was taking these shots and so we headed down into the park to get a short easy run in... or at least it was supposed to be!
I haven't run in Frick enough to be 100% familiar with the trails, though we covered a lot of familiar ground and successfully avoided going up the big downhill from Run Around the Square. However, we ended up a bit off-track towards the end of the run, conveniently right about as the sun stopped sufficiently lighting the path. It was supposed to be a short run so I didn't have my headlamp with me, but we managed to get back to the car without any major disaster. And I managed to knock both these runs out without too much difficulty, which was nice, though I don't think I'd add doubles to my routine on a regular basis without very good reason.
Thursday 9/7: Planned - Rest / Actual - Improvised lifting session #4
Renovations continue and things have been shuffled around yet again and yes, still no squat rack. They've started tearing things up in the back room on a more significant level so there are mirrors that they've taken down laying around on the floor and I have to kind of work around them to get to my weights, but whatever. Getting it done.
Squats/TRX rows, Deadlifts/pushups, biceps and triceps with the TRX, dumbbell side bends, sit-ups, and back extensions. Not feeling terribly creative but know it's important to get these workouts in so I don't end up back in DOMS-land later.
Friday 9/8: Planned - Hills: 10 minutes warmup + (8 minutes @ Z4, 2 minutes @ Z2) x 3 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - Hills: 10 minutes warmup + (8 minutes @ Z4, 2 minutes @ Z2) x 3 + 14:31 cooldown (4 miles)
Apparently Fridays are the day I misjudge my distance! This time it seemed like I would need my four-mile loop (I guess since I was running such big chunks at a relatively faster pace) but it ended up extending my cooldown in order to get back to the house. Oh well! I definitely needed my lamp and arm lights for this run as it was still very dark at 6 AM and only really started to lighten up once I got almost back to the house. The only thing weird about this run is that it was the first time I'd run in the shoes from the previous Saturday's very wet long run, and I think there may have been some grit still in the shoes despite me trying to shake them out pretty well, and the skin on my toes was sore for a while afterwards. Weird stuff.
Saturday 9/9: Planned - 90 minutes @ Z2, 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 90 minutes @ Z2, + 11:58 cooldown (7 miles)
Slept really poorly on Friday night for whatever reason, and I had an appointment at the car dealership to get them to look at a problem with the mechanism that switches the blower from defrost to face-level to feet, etc. at 10 AM Saturday so I didn't want to go all the way downtown and make my wake up even earlier than it already needed to be with extra travel time, so I decided to knock this one out in the park where I did most of my training for the Pittsburgh Half last Spring. I'd only done runs up to 5ish miles there though so I wasn't sure how I'd feel about something this long.
Turns out it's pretty boring, even if it does get the job done. I got over there a little before eight, when a couple of the farmers market vendors were starting to set up and to my surprise, several Little League games were already in progress. I decided to stick to the main outer loop of the park which is slightly less than 2 miles. Normally I'd run a particular section twice each loop to make it closer to 2 each lap, but since I was running for time and not distance, and there are lots of ways to shorten a loop if needed, I figured there was no need to complicate things. There weren't too many people other than the baseball folks when I first started, and it was chilly enough that I was glad for the long-sleeved shirt I put on as I pulled it around my hands. After one lap my hands had warmed up and other people started showing up. At first it was mostly people walking dogs (so many dogs!) and eventually there were some other runners and walkers as well. It was a tedious run, and took almost four full laps (I cut a bit off the final lap to get my cooldown closer to 10 minutes and my mileage to finish at 7 right when I got back to the bathrooms, ha) to get my 90+10 in. I think the future I'll try to stick to downtown or longer trails for long runs as this was kind of mentally painful after the second loop.
Weekly Total Time: 4:56:11 (up 21 minutes from Week 4)
Weekly Total Distance: 21 (up 1.4 miles from Week 4)
Weight Lost: Difficult to say. Friday/Saturday I decided to eat at maintenance as I'm running a PRable 5K on Sunday the 10th and wanted to replenish my glycogen reserves so I could give it a full effort and not crash and burn like I did during Run Around the Square. I'm confident there was some loss but it'll be easier to tell next week once I re-lose the extra bit of water weight that comes with increasing my calories.
Next week: Week 6! I'm loving that despite running loads slower than last training cycle (which is, admittedly, occasionally frustrating), my mileage is way up. That seems like it will really be beneficial in the long run even when right now it's bugging me that I can't go faster and keep my heart rate down. I keep reminding myself that I'm only 1/3 of the way through this cycle, and that it's all in service of a greater purpose. This week was close to my highest-mileage week of the last training cycle I did, and that was just a couple weeks before goal. I have confidence in the plan and just have to keep focused on following it as best I can. Some tweaks will be needed for Week 6 because of that 5K (I'm probably going to skip Monday's easy run for some extra recovery) but that's my last scheduled 5K of the year and the only other race I have before the half in November is one called for by the training plan. Let's do this!
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