Set Up Sunday: Looking Back on a Good Week

Planned exercise first; italicized is actual

• Monday: Speed work, 9 x 400 @ 5k pace; completed intervals for about 4 miles total (cut back on the recovery time between intervals)
• Tuesday: rest or easy bike ride; rest
• Wednesday: 5 mile run; ran 5 miles (without a Garmin and in the dark)
• Thursday: Body Works plus Abs class; rest
• Friday: easy 3 miles; easy 3 miles in the morning
• Saturday: 5 mile race + 5 miles after the race (haven’t figured out the details here yet); 5 mile race (48:54 – 9:46 pace) & 5k race (31:39 – 10:11 pace). The opportunity presented itself to do these two races with about 25 minutes between them so I thought why not? I ate a banana between the two and I think this was a really bad mistake. I got the worst cramps after the 2 mile marker in the 5k. Had to walk a lot during the last mile (was on pace for 28ish time until that time). Pretty disappointed with the time.
• Sunday: off/bike; 2.5 mile run (building from 4.0 to 6.8 and back down) and stage one, workout A of NROLW, more on that below.

As suspected, I skipped the non-running days. I ended up running 22.62 miles this week which is the most miles I’ve run since before the Mini Marathon back in May. Only really feeling that in my big toes where I have big blisters on each. Otherwise, I felt really good this week. A little disappointed with the 5k time and cramping issues but I’m hoping that was just a fluke. I’m still not sure what to expect during my half marathon in 3 weeks but am just going to do my best. I am setting the hard goal of beating 2 hours at the Mini Marathon next May.

I have said to M several times that the advertising that works the best on me is reading reviews/seeing things used/eaten on blogs. I have purchased a lot of new food items because of blogs. Purchased the Triathlete’s Training Bible after realizing I was reading the author’s blog (still working on that one. It’s HUGE!). I have seen The New Rules of Lifting for Women on several blogs (but especially Lori’s blog) knew that in the off-season (i.e., not triathlon time) I wanted to work on weight lifting so I thought this book would be a great new way to do so. I really like the structure of the work outs. I bought the book yesterday and wanted to start today so I just read the chapter on the weight lifting program (the book also covers nutrition and other things that I’m not sure of yet because I haven’t read the book yet!). I did the first workout today and really liked it. It didn’t take too long and involved some new exercises which is really what I was looking for as I was getting bored with the same old stuff.  The book says to do three workouts a week (but 2 can be okay); I’m going to shoot for three every week, although some weeks (particularly the week that the 2nd Tuesday and 2nd Thursday of the month fall in the same week because that’s my book club and my alumni association meeting) this may be difficult so I will be okay doing two workouts a week.

With that said, here’s the plan for this week:

• Monday: 45 minute tempo run (I really struggled with the last tempo run so I’m hoping this one goes better. I want to average between 9-9:30 minute miles which I realize is a large range)
• Tuesday: 20 minutes on the bike; Stage 1, Workout B of NROLW
• Wednesday: 5-6 mile run
• Thursday: Elliptical or bike warm-up; Stage 1, Workout A of NROLW
• Friday: 3 easy miles
• Saturday: rest
• Sunday: 10-11 mile run

I’m not sure how those workouts I going to go. I may try to do the Tuesday and Thursday workouts in the morning before work. We’ll see. I know it seems like a lot (and probably is) but I need to step it up and so I’m going to!

What are you doing this week? Have you done a weight training program that you’ve really liked or seen results with?