Carmel Week 10: Miles Upon Miles Bring Me Smiles

Miles Upon Miles Bring Me Smiles

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Spaghetti face!

Karate time.

This training week brought the end of January training. Naturally, that means adding up monthly miles! Surprisingly, I ran one of my top three months since I started keeping track in 2015:

This week was a HUGE confidence booster after three rough long runs in a row. Overall, I felt great for all of my runs. They had their moments, of course, but I left none of them feeling shitty.

• 1/29: 6.58 miles, 9:04/mile; Chest/Back, 30 minutes. Hill surge Monday. FINALLY, the Academy Park hill was clear of ice. Sarah and I braved the Scary Cherry route to add this hill to our repertoire. It was harder than any of the other hills we've run for our surges (which means we should probably do it more often...hello Flying Pig).
• 1/30: 9.77 miles, 8:11/mile. Speed day presented a 60 minute progressive run (80 minutes total with warm up and cool down). I killed this workout two weeks ago, but it was 10 minutes shorter. Coach added the extra 10 minutes in addition to me attempting to run faster for my overall pace. Despite the new challenges, I survived to tell the story. I felt good until the last 7-8 minutes of the speed section. I was instructed to stay "controlled," so I opted to run my last 5 minutes at 7:19 pace rather than my initial goal of attempting 7:13/mile.
  

  
• 1/31: 10.22 miles, 8:59/mile; Bis/Tris, 30 minutes. If you like being cold and running into crazy wind, today was your day! I was supposed to run whatever felt easy for 60-90 minutes. I was talking with my girl, Lisa B, about her speed workout. We decided that the Wednesday group (me, Sarah, Britt, and Elizabeth) could help her through it. We did the following workout with her, and followed it up with three more miles.
  

  
• 2/1: Power Yoga Flow, 45 minutes. I picked out a random yoga video on YouTube and dared to do it at the gym. I also started a new IG yoga challenge. I had to do a pose that was new to me...baby crow.
• 2/2: 5.13 miles, 9:26/mile. Even though I had the day off, I wanted to get my run done early. I met up with Noemi and Katie on another frigid morning. I believe it was 12 degrees with a real feel of -8. Yikes. I was freezing the first mile, but felt ok after that. I forgot to restart my watch after crossing the road at a stoplight. UGH. I got my stats from Noemi. We unintentionally ran negative splits!
  

  

  I had to borrow Noemi's stats. Stupid me for getting button happy on my watch.

  
  

  

  Gotta love unintentional negative splits!

• 2/3: 18 miles, 8:56/mile. So, so cold! I layered well, but my hands got cold towards the end when water kept spilling on my gloves. Half way through the run, my water spout froze so I had to open the entire bottle to get water. It then would not close all the way, and water kept spilling out. I just couldn't win in the water department! Fortunately, that was the worst of my problems. Amanda made what should have been a nice hilly route through Highland Lakes, but we could not find this specific road. We ended up going up, down, and all around this one small section of the subdivision. Somehow, we managed to get 11 of our miles in there before connecting to the Genoa Trail. I ran just over 13 miles with Amanda, Chris, Brittaney, and Heather. Chris and I had 18 miles, so we ran one more mile together before I had to split off to attempt the last 4 miles at a faster pace. I was quite pleased with how I did! Since that awful 18 miler three weeks ago, I've slowly felt better each week. I would say this week has been one of my better runs despite the stupid cold weather...my joints get so achy in this crap.
  

  

  Three fifths of the crew. [Amanda, ME, Chris]

  
  

  

  BAM!

• 2/4: 2.2 miles, 20:31/mile. Meg, Amanda, and I all volunteered to pass out water at the 5th line 5k finish. We decided to carpool and do our walk beforehand. Due to snow in the eye injuries, we cut it short by 15 minutes and had a spot of tea at Starbucks where I bought this sweet reusable cup for only $2.
  

  

  Cuuuute!

  
  

  

  A spot of tea with the girls. [ME, Amanda, Meg]

  
  

  

  The random margs on the street were begging us to take a pic!

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On a fitness note: After taking a few days off of IG yoga challenges, I started a new one mid week. I was intrigued by the potential challenge of it...15 days of arm balances! YIKES! It's been very interesting and full of curse words while practicing.

Modified EPK2 (my left leg should be straight ahead).

Elephant trunk pose.

Baby crow.