Monday: a little short of 9 miles, 500' gain, 1:01. Apartment up to Orchard, up to 500S, down to 89, and back along that. This felt like a really easy effort for 7:00 pace on moderately hilly terrain. Good sign.
Tuesday: 8 miles, workout. Ran on a treadmill at a .5% incline. Probably should've done this on a track, but it was cold and icy outside when I finally got to run at 7:30 PM. In any case, I put the treadmill at a .5% incline to hopefully make up for the fact that belt slightly improves your speed (rule of thumb I've heard), although I'm pretty certain it didn't make up for it entirely. Did mile repeats with .25 mile jog between each. .25 jog, 5:10 mile, .25 jog, 5:04 mile, .25 jog, 5:02 mile, .25 jog, 5:00 mile, .25 jog, 5:00 mile, with 1.75 mile cooldown afterwards. At the end of each jogging rest, I brought the treadmill up to speed right before the mile was to start so I wouldn't lose time speeding the belt up.
Wednesday: Off, in the spirit of not overdoing things and just being in "fun mode" until the week after Thanksgiving.
Thursday: Got home late, took another day off. Haha. At least it's supposed to be a super easy week. :)
Friday: 5 miles. Hit a track for some a little speed the night before the next day's race. Mile warmup, mile in 5:14 (quite windy, but still didn't feel super difficult. Felt like I could keep close to it for a full 5k if necessary, but it would be absolutely maxed out for the distance and I would need someone pushing me to hit that pace), 400 jog, 800 in 2:30, 400 jog, 400 in 72, almost 2 mile cooldown. This was an easy workout, but the goal was just to do something quick and short the night before the race.
Saturday: 7 miles, long warmup + Riverton Holiday Heroes 5k, 2nd, 17:30. My legs aren't quite in speed shape, so recoveries from fast days are apparently slow and even the easy workout from the night before left them feeling crappy. A younger kid took it out hard and I figured that kids that age generally run too hard at the start, not to mention that my legs just didn't feel good, so I kept things comfortable and let the kid get a bit of a gap on me in hopes that my legs would come back. Legs never felt good, he gradually got away and I took 2nd in 17:30. Lame. If it was a closer race, I could've eeked out another 15 seconds I'd think, but by the end, the kid had 30 seconds on me and I wasn't feeling it, so I coasted in. Granted, the course was pretty hilly (150' vertical) and it was quite windy out, so coupled with the elevation, this isn't the worst time imaginable (16:59 flat sea level equivalent with hills and altitude, not sure what the wind was, but I'd imagine it added somewhere in the ballpark of 10 seconds). Aerobically, the effort wasn't very hard, but my legs just weren't having it. Oh well. There goes my 5k win streak dating back to 2009 (granted, only 5 races). Haha.
Sunday: 6 miles, 5 miles around NSL, easy, :39, and then an extra mile jogging with Holly.
One more easy week, next week, probably with one more short/fun race mixed in (hopefully not so slow this time), and then it'll be on to high mileage and marathon training.
Music for the week is something that I am extremely excited about. Sergei Bortkiewicz is one of my favorite composers and I had heard rumors of a possible upcoming recording of a "Russian Rhapsody" that he had written in 1935, which had never previously been recorded. Well, his music has started to undergo a resurgence in Ukraine and one of their orchestras finally played this piece and made a semi-professional recording of it a couple weeks ago. Here's the video:
I simply don't understand how something this outstanding could lie dormant for 70+ years. This is a true masterpiece and I can't stop listening to it.
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