Annie's on the run

So first thing’s first. Thanks for hanging in there for a whole week. I’m proud of all of us and I’ll try to be worthy of your page view. Also, to make things a little easier for you and for me, I’m going to put myself out there and establish a posting schedule (yikes, commitment). Come check me out every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I was a little delusional last week in thinking that I’d post every day in this NEW YEAR, NEW ME phase. Turns out my life really isn’t that interesting and there is absolutely no need for me to talk at you every day. Let’s hope I can scrounge up enough material for at least three days a week.

Anyway, back to running. Well, considering this past week was the beginning of my Eugene Marathon training, I’d say it went fairly well. I had a failed tempo run, but every other run was more or less successful. S and I even signed up for a gym so I could run during the snowstorm! Riley got in a few strides, too.  As you can see the snow doesn’t bother him quite as much.

Here’s what this week looked like:

Monday: Rest. I wanted to give my legs a chance to recover after Sunday’s 5k.

Tuesday: A bit of a shake out run. Ran 5.18 miles (8:41 average) in the neighborhood with no expectations. I felt surprisingly ok, even though my legs were most definitely packed full of sand.

Wednesday: The devil tempo run. Ran 5.08 miles total (8:27 average) 2 tempo miles in the middle (7:37, 7:47). Fingers crossed this week’s will go better, as there is a 100% chance I’ll be doing it on the treadmill.

Thursday: 7 miles (8:27 average) on the treadmill. Aside from crazy “sea/treadmill legs” after the run, I felt great.

Friday: Rest. I had every intention of running and it just did not happen. 3 glasses of wine did though.

Saturday: Long run with S at Cherry Creek State Park.  11.45 miles (8:36 average pace). I was actually pretty psyched about this run. I felt great with the exception of the hills on the way back. Turns out I’ll probably need to incorporate more of those into my training.

The views were also very gross.

Sunday: Recovery run. 6 miles total (9:17 average) 4 of which were with Riley and S.

Now, for the super scary stuff. This week’s goals:

• Sticking with that tempo run. Scheduled 4 miles on the treadmill. Let’s shoot for a 7:45 average. I’m admittedly hoping to get that pace back down to sub 7:30s by the end of training season.
• Run with my phone every day so I can snap a picture of the bald eagle in my neighborhood and prove to all the skeptics out there that I actually know what a bald eagle looks like and I’m not insane. HE’S REAL. I THINK.
• Get all 6 days of running in and reestablish Sunday as my rest day.
• Make most (if not all) of those runs happen in the morning. Tomorrow morning Annie is already laughing about this insane statement.
• Less wine and coffee, more water. I’ve been horrifically dehydrated lately and I really need to get better about drinking water before and after my runs. Never mind the fact that I’m writing this post from a brewery. It’s fine. These are NEXT WEEK’S goals.
• Lastly, eat as healthy as Riley. I swear he only likes meat (we feed him an all raw diet), bananas, and cucumbers.

So that’s where we’re at now. Happy Monday (if you believe in that kind of thing) and we’ll talk on Wednesday!