The Honest Mother Runner: Carmel Week 4: Still Figuring Out the Lingo

Still Figuring Out the Lingo

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Roop goofing around with her brother's hats.

Although Zach says I'm not annoying him, I tend to have a lot of questions regarding his lingo. He is trying to get me away from focusing on a specific pace. Instead, he wants me to go by feel. This is so foreign to me! This week, I battled with words such as "on," "steady," and "speed up each mile." I honestly don't know how I fared with the expectation, but here's how I did:

12/18: 5.84 miles, 9:25/mile; Bis/Tris, 30 minutes. Today was hill surge day (55 easy minutes with 8x8 second hill surges in the last half of the run). To get my butt out of bed, I agreed to meet some friends at the dam in Westerville. We ran a 5 mile route, then I did my surges and finished up my minutes. I told my friend Lisa that I wanted to run slow today because of last week's conviction. I still don't know if my easy is too fast sometimes. Today was rough until I did my hill surges. It's like they woke me up.
12/19: 8.22 miles, 7:55/mile. Speed workout: 10 minutes warm up, [4 minutes on/1 minute steady] x9, 10 minute cool down. My first question to Zach was, "What is 'on'?" LOL. He explained it in words, and I did my best to follow. He challenged me to do this entire run by feel (which I did!). I goofed up my watch during one of my intervals (as seen in the red below). I meant to stop my watch to blow my nose and strip, but I forgot to stop it. Apparently this took me about 45 seconds, so I decided to just run steady for the remaining 15 seconds and go back into my next "on" interval. This would have changed my overall mileage and average, but I'm still good with the result shown. The second half of the run was actually easier than the first half. It takes me a while to warm up. I finished feeling like I worked hard, and felt decent the rest of the day.
12/20: 6.56 miles, 9:10/mile; Chest/Back workout, 30 minutes. Oh my was I sore this morning!! That workout yesterday worked my legs for sure (in addition to my run, I had a bunch of other exercises I had to do...I also went ice skating with James.). I was instructed to run 60-70 easy minutes. I normally go for the higher end of things, but not today! I could have forced myself to run 70 minutes, but my legs told me to stop at an hour. Fortunately, Sarah was in the same boat. I was happy with our run, and actually felt better after finishing. My legs weren't as sore as the day progressed.
12/21: 10 cycling miles, 45:03; 15 minutes inversion practice. Once again, this was placed perfectly where I needed it in my week. My legs felt so much better last night, but the easy cycling helped work out the remaining yuck.
12/22: 7.79 miles, 8:59/mile. My Friday easy run was upped to 70 minutes and my strides to 5x25 seconds. A fellow runner organized a bRUNch for those of us that didn't have other responsibilities in the late morning. Following the run, we met at Northstar for coffee and goodies.

We took over the streets of Westerville!

We then took over Northstar.
12/23: 4.08 walking miles, 14:46/mile. Saturdays are typically for long runs, but the weather had other plans. I don't necessarily avoid the rain, but I'm not a fan of cold and rainy. I got permission from Coach to switch my long run to Sunday and do my walk today. When the rain cleared in the afternoon, I took Sophie for an hour stroll.
12/24: 14.01 miles, 9:02/mile. My long run workout called for 14 miles with the last three faster (if I was up to it). My hips always feel a little sore when I run in the cold, so I wasn't super confident about running fast when I reached mile 12. I ran the first 10-12 miles with Sarah and Chris, and finished the last two solo. I had to deal with some elevation, but it didn't seem to have a horrible effect on me. My last three miles were [8:11, 8:12, and 7:58].

Two of my crew.