Monday, March 23, 2015

9 Miles on the Treadmill

the grungy chair from the library that I'm almost finished recovering

Saturday was two weeks from my half marathon and I was supposed to do a 13 mile long run, but since I decided to back off on my long run mileage, I only did 9 miles. I had planned on incorporating hills, but that didn't end up happening. This ended up being a tough workout: my left glute was bothering me and I kept having ligament pain in my side. Even strapping everything down with two maternity belts wasn't enough to make my run pain-free. That, and I'm 23 weeks pregnant. Note to self: If I ever get pregnant again, I will NOT run a half marathon after 20 weeks

I hadn't planned on running one at 25 weeks, but this was the earliest and closest I could find, so I didn't have much choice. Well, other than not doing it at all, but at the time that I decided to do it and registered for the race, that wasn't an option. Backing out at this point would make all those long workouts for nothing. I don't need long mileage to stay healthy while pregnant- I could have gotten away with much shorter workouts if I wasn't training for a half marathon. Needless to say, after the half marathon I will be massively scaling back on my mileage.

Back to my long run: it was mostly a long walk. Running was just too painful for most of my workout, so I walked the majority of the mileage. It was a fast walk, so I was able to maintain a decent pace, but it was definitely not race pace.

I started with a 10 minute walking warmup and ended with a 15 minute walking cool down. In between I alternated 30 minutes running with 10 minutes of walking, though like I said, the running portions ended up being mostly walking also. I ran when I could, but didn't push it.

In the end, it took me 2 hours, 26 min, 6 sec to complete 9.01 miles, which is a 16:12 min/mile pace. My warmup and cool down added another 1.15 miles, for a total of 10.16 miles for the day.

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While running the 5k last week, I realized that since the half marathon is local I should take advantage of that and drive the course ahead of time. I wanted to get an idea of hills and such so I knew what to expect.

Monday we were in town for my chiro appt, so we drove the course. It's a scenic course through town, hitting a lot of the historically significant areas. Most of the hills are rolling hills- long and not too steep, though there's a couple shorter, much steeper hills right towards the end. Those are going to suck. It's hard to judge accurately when driving, but my impression is that the first part of the course shouldn't be too bad, the middle-ish will get harder, there's a couple miles that run on a nice flat bike path along the river, and then the last couple miles have some steep hills that are not going to be fun, especially so late in the race. My goal is just to finish in less than 3 hours, and to still be able to move afterward.

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Monday- rest day after Saturday's 5k
Tuesday- treadmill
Wednesday- rest day after standing and carrying River for hours Tuesday night- massive glute pain
Thursday- rest day- dentist appointments
Friday- treadmill walk hills
Saturday- treadmill long run/walk

Total mileage for the week: 13.75 miles. Better than last week, though if you look at my workouts, you can see that most of that mileage came Saturday.

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