Would this week be lucky 13? Time to find out...
Sunday 10/29: Planned - Rest / Actual - Rest
Slept in Sunday morning as I recovered a bit from the Halloween party. We went to Denny's and had breakfast, and did our normal grocery shopping, etc. A quiet downtime day.
Monday 10/30: Planned - Threshold: 15 minutes @ Z2 + 15 minutes @ Z4 + 15 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 15 minutes @ Z2 + 15 minutes @ Z4 + 15 minutes @ Z2 + 7:42 cooldown (4.12 miles)
This week is a bit unusual in its layout since I have the 10K on Saturday, so this was one of the higher-effort runs of the week. Unfortunately I ended up doing it entirely by feel as my heart rate monitor strap refused to connect to my watch. I think I did all right, though, and was pleased that I managed to get in 4 miles.
Tuesday 10/31: Planned - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 11:15 cooldown (3.1 miles)
I messed with the heart rate strap a bit on Monday night and it seemed to be connecting again so I thought I'd be good, but once again when I got out the door it was acting up. I was getting a reading, but it was consistently in the 68-72 bpm range so was clearly not accurate. This is a super annoying time for something like this to happen but at least I've got a reasonably good sense of what my zones feel like as far as effort goes by now.
Tuesday night I put on Zoya again and went out to sing showtunes with my Hamiltunes Non-Stop Broadway friends, so it was a pretty late night. I think we got home around midnight, so it was looking like a morning run was not in the cards. I normally work from home on Wednesdays so I figured I'd get it in at lunchtime.
Wednesday 11/1: Planned - Intervals: 10 minutes warmup + minutes @ Z4 + 1 minute @ Z2) x5 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 30 minutes @ Z2 + 11:14 cooldown (3.76 miles)
It's (half) marathon month! Yikes! I was feeling pretty tired, as predicted, but before I got out the door at lunchtime, Mike asked if I wanted to join him on the track for my run later that evening instead. I like mixing it up and I've never done an actual run on a track before, so I agreed! The high school near where he lives has their track lit up at all hours, apparently, and we had it all to ourselves.
It was chilly and pretty humid, but overall it was a great new challenge for me to be able to run and just focus on form and speed without having to worry about things like cars, dogs, terrain, and elevation. Bonus - I got my HR strap working again! I'm definitely going to work this in to my next training cycle somehow because it turns out when you give me a nice flat smooth surface to run on, I can put in some pretty good speed, and had to make a real effort to run fast enough to stay in my HR zones! This also lined up nicely with the 10K race coming up for some extra confidence. And our half starts and finishes on a school track, so good to get at least a little familiarity with the experience ahead of time.
Thursday 11/2: Planned - Rest / Actual - Rest
I generally skip the gym the week of a race since I don't want to add any DOMS-related difficulties to my life. And so Thursday I caught up on other stuff I skipped the weekend before like meal prep and hanging out with my cats. Good stuff.
Friday 11/3: Planned - Easy: 20 minutes @ Z2 + 5-10 minutes cooldown / Actual - 20 minutes @ Z2 + 9:07 cooldown (2.06 miles)
A short little shakeout run to keep the legs moving, nothing more. It got warm again, so I pulled out a t-shirt for this one and could have even maybe done a tank if I'd been running harder.
Saturday 11/4: Planned - 10K Race / Actual - Lois Stobbs Memorial Veterans Day 10K (6.3 miles - official time 1:00:09, Strava 10K @ 59:27) - a PR either way!
Oooh boy. I was both looking forward to and not looking forward to this race. I'm putting together the separate full report as usual, but I'm quite pleased with how this turned out! Very much exactly the boost of confidence I needed for what I'm taking on in three weeks. We had perfect weather and it was just a great day to run.
Weekly Total Time: 3:45:04 (down 1:00:06 from Week 12)
Weekly Total Distance: 19.34 (down 2.14 miles from Week 12 - definitely a fast week!)
Weight Lost: Finally saw some actual number drops on the scale this week though with recovery from Halloween and then maintenance days in support of a race, the scale is up for the time being. It's time to start eating a bit more anyway, so I expect to hover around the lowest weight from earlier in the week and maybe drop off a bit more, but may not see tons of progress in the last few weeks. Based on my 10K I'm in reasonably good shape so I'm not as concerned with the specific numbers so much as keeping in the same general area or maybe losing a little bit more and then knocking out the last couple pounds after Thanksgiving. Very pleased with my efforts here - now I just need to stay on track so I don't spend my next training cycle at a deficit as I'm sure it would be beneficial to train a whole cycle at maintenance.
Next week: Week 14 is basically the beginning of the end of the plan - it's all a slow taper from here. I'm still debating trying to get in one more tough long run but if it doesn't pan out, I know I've put in the miles and have a good shot at hitting my race day goals. Now it's all about staying steady, staying healthy, and putting myself in the best position to succeed. I'm really excited about some of the things that are coming up after this half, and can't wait to see what I'm going to achieve by this time next year.
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