Week 10 - A Little Speed

Recap of last week's training:

Monday - Scheduled rest day - I actually felt pretty good considering I had just run 15.6 miles the day before.

Tuesday - Floater rest day - For some reason, my ankles/shins/calfs decided to tighten up Monday night and were still pretty tight Tuesday morning, so I took my extra rest day (I have an 'extra' floating rest day planned into my week)

Wednesday - 4 mi interval run on the treadmill - I forgot to grab my Garmin, so I decided to hit the treadmill instead of the trail (no, I'm not dependent on the GPS, not at all :) I did a nice relaxed pace with 10 pick-ups of 6.2-6.5 mph. A little speed felt like a nice change.

Thursday - Unscheduled rest day - I woke up with pink eye, called off work, and pretty much just stayed around the house all day.

Friday - ANOTHER Unscheduled rest day - Just didn't manage to get my butt outside to run.

Saturday - Scheduled rest day

Sunday - 11.5 miles at the Lakes - I parked at LOTI and did 2 laps of LOTI, 1 lap of Calhoun, and 1 more lap of LOTI. I left everything but the mp3 and a key at the car and stopped each lap for some water/gel. I was feeling good, so I thought I would pick up the pace for this "shorter" long run of ONLY 11 miles (who thought I would ever say that!) I ended up averaging 10:08 per mile!!! That is WAY faster than I was expecting…plus, I negative split it! My fastest mile was mile 8 @ 9:43. Besides the humidity (I was seriously dripping after the first mile) it was a really great run.

I had a cutback week planned…just wasn't suppose to be cutback quite that much. But, I feel somewhat rested and ready to do some serious training this week.

I treated myself to a new hydration belt…which should be arriving today (hopefully). I went with the Amphipod runlite 4. It probably has more than I need, but I like that it is so flexible. You can take off or add bottles and pouches. You can place them anywhere on the belt. And you can put them either vertical or horizontal. I am hoping I get it today so I can try it out on my 8 miler tomorrow before using it on my first 18 miler this weekend.