Workout Recap: 9/8-9/17

I need to get into a regular Saturday cadence in logging my workouts! Here goes for the last week and a half…

Thursday 9/8:  I spent Wednesday night traveling back to Dallas from Ithaca, and didn’t get to my hotel in Dallas until midnight. Thursday I wasn’t feeling a workout at all, but forced myself to at least do two quick miles on the treadmill. First mile was 7:53 pace the whole way; the second mile, I sped up each quarter mile so that my split paces were 7:27, 7:15, 6:57, and 6:30. This was really easy and fun – I liked that I was finally succeeding at a progression run where I got faster throughout, although it was certainly a short one! Average heart rate of 139, with a peak of 163.

Friday 9/9: Rest day.

Saturday 9/10: Patriot’s Day 5K! I still owe you guys a race report on this, but the spoiler is that I PRed, so I guess that rest day wasn’t for nothing 😉 Average heart of 154, with a peak of 181.

Sunday 9/11: Adam and I went for a short hike in the morning up and down Sanitas, but I was really not feeling a hike and so we took it very easy. We did take the long loop around, coming back down via Lion’s Lair instead of just doing an out-and-back up the main route, but took our time so it ended up taking a full two hours. (For comparison, when I do this at workout pace I’m done in an hour.) Average heart rate of 102, with a peak of 167.

Monday 9/12: Back to regular training! I headed to Beyond Pilates for a Reform and Run class, which used to be my Monday night regular workout until I started 5K training. That night’s workout was four nine minute sets, which I like a lot better than more sets but shorter sets. The first treadmill run began with a one minute power walk (5.0 mph), one minute jog (7.0), one minute run (8.5 mph). Then we did three minutes of alternating walk/sprint, with the first interval at 50 secs walk / 10 secs sprint, then 40 secs walk / 20 secs sprint, and finally 30 secs walk / 30 secs sprint. And for our final three minutes, it was back to the walk / jog / run for one minute each. I was really happy with the speeds I was hitting, as I used to be about 1 mph slower for every speed. On the sprints I was sustaining speeds of over 11 mph! But midway through the first set, I felt like I was absolutely dying. After checking out my heart rate data later, I saw why – my heart rate was all the way up to 182! I think that’s the highest heart rate I’ve ever logged. Average heart rate for the workout was 123, which is about par for that class since it involves a lot of rest and weights.

Tuesday 9/13: Supposed to be a run day, but my shin splints were bugging me so I shifted my schedule out a day. I decided to try out a City Surf strength class, but really wished I hadn’t. City Surf always sounds to me like it will be a fun class, but most days I get in there and just hate every second of it. I feel like it’s so unreasonably hard (e.g., Tuesday’s workout include a section where we were supposed to hold a plank for ten straight minutes while alternately doing leg lifts and pushups) that I end up taking a lot of breaks, and cheating myself out of a good workout. Life is too short to do workouts you don’t like, and I’m going to remind myself of this in the future so I don’t do City Surf 🙂

Wednesday 9/14: Run day, at last! I was scheduled for a progression run with the mile splits as follows: 8:30, 8:15, 7:45, 7:45 (average pace: 8:03). Instead, I did splits of 8:30, 8:00, 7:40, 7:20 (average pace:  7:52). Boom! Nailed it. I was really proud of myself for finally succeeding at a four mile progression run, and coming in with pretty decent splits, too. I’m hoping that now that I actually have a base progression run scheduled that I can successfully do, we can just start speeding it up a little bit to where I can succeed in the future. Average heart rate of 146, with a peak of 169.

I also headed to a Beyond Pilates class after work that was a little bit disappointing. It was pure pilates (no treadmill), and the instructor didn’t really get our heart rates up much. The next day, though, I discovered I had indeed gotten a burn in my legs – I was sore!

Thursday 9/15: I went to the third of the Beyond studios for a Beyond 500 class. Again, it was four 9-minute sets, which I was psyched about! The first run was alternating running one minute and walking backward for one minute, until the 9 minutes were up. For the second run, we did a 40 second run, 20 second sprint, and then walked 60 secs – repeating that sequence till the end of the block. My shin splint were really bugging me on the run. Oddly enough, it felt more comfortable to go faster. I think this was probably because my stride was longer and I was toe-striking; when doing a slow jog, I tended to land much more flat footed. On the pilates chair side, everything was glute-focused – lots of lunges and weighted bridges, with a few plank-to-pikes thrown in. Average heart rate of 115, with a high of 159.

Friday 9/16: Planned run day turned into an elliptical day, since my shin splints were terrible. These need to go away, stat! Average heart rate of 122.

Saturday 9/17: I headed down to Gociety Adventure Fest with Amanda to check out the activities and also take a yoga class. I wasn’t feeling the yoga class at first, when we were doing some basic flows, but in the second half of class we did some one legged balances that felt like they were really working my stability muscles, and I liked that a lot better. It was really nice to be doing yoga on thick grass in the Colorado sunshine! Average heart rate of 70, with a high of 95.

Unfortunately, the Adventure Fest itself was rather disappointing. Tickets were $15, but there didn’t seem to be any reason for the charge, as the event was basically one big expo with vendors hawking things at you. And we had to pay for that privilege, with nothing else given as swag? Very strange. There was supposed to be a “tiny house village” to explore, but the map only showed two tiny houses (not a village) and neither one seemed to exist when we actually got to those places. There was supposed to be a treadmill hill competition, but the treadmill was out of order. And very generally, there wasn’t much to do except walk around and get coupons from vendors. There weren’t a ton of people at the event, and I think it would have been a lot more successful if it was free so anyone could come and go – and the vendors probably would have gotten a lot more value out of it, too.

After Adventure Fest, I ran a ton of errands, and then found myself home with an extra hour before a dinner party I was hosting. Just enough time for a quick run and a shower! I headed out for a three mile loop on the trails behind my neighborhood, and was so glad I did so. It was definitely hot to run in the late afternoon rather than the morning, but the views were pretty and I was just happy to be out there. Also, the loop is really hilly, yet in just under 31 minutes I covered it faster than I have in the past – yay! I also put compression socks on after the run, and that seemed to help my shin splints – I need to start bringing those with me to travel. Average heart rate of 147, with a high of 161.

This week: I want to get in a bunch of my favorite classes during my last full week in Dallas, but still be able to do my treadmill runs. That means lots of foam rolling, and lots of time wearing compression socks! But I’m hopeful that the combination of the two of those will help resolve the lingering issues.